Possibilities of Prayer
E. M.
Bounds
"The story of prayer is
the story of great achievements. Prayer is a wonderful power placed by Almighty
God in the hands of His saints, which may be used to accomplish great purposes
and to achieve unusual results. Prayer reaches to everything, takes in all
things great and small which are promised by God to the children of men. The
only limits to prayer are the promises of God and His ability to fulfill those
promises."
Discover for yourself the infinite possibilities of prayer. Chapters like
"Answered Prayer," "Prayer Miracles," and "Wonders of God Through Prayer" will
help you understand what can be accomplished if we will only pray.
A practical, challenging look at prayer and its power.
Edward McKendree Bounds (1835-1913) practiced law for three years until he
was called to preach the gospel. While serving as chaplain during the Civil War,
he was captured and held prisoner in Nashville, Tennessee. After his release, he
held several pastorates. His books on prayer have been continual best-sellers
for over fifty years.
The Possibilities of Prayer
E. M. Bounds
Scanned by Harry Plantinga, whp@wheaton.edu,
From the uncopyrighted
MOODY PRESS EDITION, 1980
ISBN 0-8024-6724-5
This etext is in the public domain.
Contents
I. THE MINISTRY OF PRAYER
II. PRAYER AND THE PROMISES
III. PRAYER AND THE PROMISES (Continued)
IV. PRAYER -- ITS POSSIBILITIES
V. PRAYER -- ITS POSSIBILITIES (Continued)
VI. PRAYER -- ITS POSSIBILITIES (Continued)
VII. PRAYER -- ITS WIDE RANGE
VIII. PRAYER -- FACTS AND HISTORY
IX. PRAYER -- FACTS AND HISTORY (Continued)
X. ANSWERED PRAYER
XI. ANSWERED PRAYER (Continued)
XII. ANSWERED PRAYER (Continued)
XIII. PRAYER MIRACLES
XIV. WONDERS OF GOD THROUGH PRAYER
XV. PRAYER AND DIVINE PROVIDENCE
XVI. PRAYER AND DIVINE PROVIDENCE (Continued)
"Prayer should be the breath of our breathing, the thought of
our thinking, the soul of our feeling, and the life of our living, the sound
of our hearing, the growth of our growing." Prayer in its magnitude is length
without end, width without bounds, height without top, and depth without
bottom. Illimitable in its breadth, exhaustless in height, fathomless in
depths and infinite in extension. -- HOMER W. HODGE
THE
ministry of prayer has been the peculiar distinction of all of God's saints.
This has been the secret of their power. The energy and the soul of their work
has been the closet. The need of help outside of man being so great, man's
natural inability to always judge kindly, justly, and truly, and to act the
Golden Rule, so prayer is enjoined by Christ to enable man to act in all these
things according to the Divine will. By prayer, the ability is secured to feel
the law of love, to speak according to the law of love, and to do everything in
harmony with the law of love.
God can help us.
God is a Father. We need God's good things to help us to "do justly, to love
mercy, and to walk humbly before God." We need Divine aid to act brotherly,
wisely, and nobly, and to judge truly, and charitably. God's help to do all
these things in God's way is secured by prayer. "Ask, and ye shall receive;
seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto
you."
In the marvellous output of Christian
graces and duties, the result of giving ourselves wholly to God, recorded in the
twelfth chapter of Romans, we have the words, "Continuing instant in prayer,"
preceded by "rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation," followed by,
"Distributing to the necessity of the saints, given to hospitality." Paul thus
writes as if these rich and rare graces and unselfish duties, so sweet, bright,
generous, and unselfish, had for their center and source the ability to
pray.
This is the same word which is used of
the prayer of the disciples which ushered in Pentecost with all of its rich and
glorious blessings of the Holy Spirit. In Colossians, Paul presses the word into
the service of prayer again, "Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with
thanksgiving." The word in its background and root means strong, the ability to
stay, and persevere steadfast, to hold fast and firm, to give constant attention
to.
In Acts, chapter six, it is translated,
"Give ourselves continually to prayer." There is in it constancy, courage,
unfainting perseverance. It means giving such marked attention to, and such deep
concern to a thing, as will make it conspicuous and
controlling.
This is an advance in demand on
"continue." Prayer is to be incessant, without intermission, assiduously, no
check in desire, in spirit or in act, the spirit and the life always in the
attitude of prayer. The knees may not always be bended, the lips may not always
be vocal with words of prayer, but the spirit is always in the act and
intercourse of prayer.
There ought to be no
adjustment of life or spirit for closet hours. The closet spirit should sweetly
rule and adjust all times and occasions. Our activities and work should be
performed in the same spirit which makes our devotion and which makes our closet
time sacred. "Without intermission, incessantly, assiduously," describes an
opulence, and energy, and unabated and ceaseless strength and fulness of effort;
like the full and exhaustless and spontaneous flow of an artesian stream. Touch
the man of God who thus understands prayer, at any point, at any time, and a
full current of prayer is seen flowing from
him.
But all these untold benefits, of which
the Holy Spirit is made to us the conveyor, go back in their disposition and
results to prayer. Not on a little process and a mere performance of prayer is
the coming of the Holy Spirit and of His great grace conditioned, but on prayer
set on fire, by an unquenchable desire, with such a sense of need as cannot be
denied, with a fixed determination which will not let go, and which will never
faint till it wins the greatest good and gets the best and last blessing God has
in store for us.
The First Christ, Jesus, our
Great High Priest, forever blessed and adored be His Name, was a gracious
Comforter, a faithful Guide, a gifted Teacher, a fearless Advocate, a devoted
Friend, and an all powerful Intercessor. The other, "another Comforter," the
Holy Spirit, comes into all these blessed relations of fellowship, authority and
aid, with all the tenderness, sweetness, fulness and efficiency of the First
Christ.
Was the First Christ the Christ of
prayer? Did He offer prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears
unto God? Did He seek the silence, the solitude and the darkness that He might
pray unheard and unwitnessed save by heaven, in His wrestling agony, for man
with God? Does He ever live, enthroned above at the Father's right hand, there
to pray for us?
Then how truly does the other
Christ, the other Comforter, the Holy Spirit, represent Jesus Christ as the
Christ of prayer! This other Christ, the Comforter, plants Himself not in the
waste of the mountain nor far into the night, but in the chill and the night of
the human heart, to rouse it to the struggle, and to teach it the need and form
of prayer. How the Divine Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, puts into the human
heart the burden of earth's almighty need, and makes the human lips give voice
to its mute and unutterable groanings!
What a
mighty Christ of prayer is the Holy Spirit! How He quenches every flame in the
heart but the flame of heavenly desire! How He quiets, like a weaned child, all
the self-will, until in will, in brain, and in heart, and by mouth, we pray only
as He prays. "Making intercession for the saints, according to the will of
God."
You need not utterly despair even of those who for the present
"turn again and rend you." For if all your arguments and persuasives fail,
there is yet another remedy left, and one that is frequently found effectual,
when no other method avails. This is prayer. Therefore, whatsoever you desire
or want, either for others or for your own soul, "Ask, and it shall be given
you." -- JOHN
WESLEY
WITHOUT the
promise prayer is eccentric and baseless. Without prayer, the promise is dim,
voiceless, shadowy, and impersonal. The promise makes prayer dauntless and
irresistible. The Apostle Peter declares that God has given to us "exceeding
great and precious promises." "Precious" and "exceeding great" promises they
are, and for this very cause we are to "add to our faith," and supply virtue. It
is the addition which makes the promises current and beneficial to us. It is
prayer which makes the promises weighty, precious and practical. The Apostle
Paul did not hesitate to declare that God's grace so richly promised was made
operative and efficient by prayer. "Ye also helping together by prayer for us."
The promises of God are "exceeding great and
precious," words which clearly indicate their great value and their broad reach,
as grounds upon which to base our expectations in praying. Howsoever exceeding
great and precious they are, their realization, the possibility and condition of
that realization, are based on prayer. How glorious are these promises to the
believing saints and to the whole Church! How the brightness and bloom, the
fruitage and cloudless midday glory of the future beam on us through the
promises of God! Yet these promises never brought hope to bloom or fruit to a
prayerless heart. Neither could these promises, were they a thousandfold
increased in number and preciousness, bring millennium glory to a prayerless
Church. Prayer makes the promise rich, fruitful and a conscious
reality.
Prayer as a spiritual energy, and
illustrated in its enlarged and mighty working, makes way for and brings into
practical realization the promises of
God.
God's promises cover all things which
pertain to life and godliness, which relate to body and soul, which have to do
with time and eternity. These promises bless the present and stretch out in
their benefactions to the illimitable and eternal future. Prayer holds these
promises in keeping and in fruition. Promises are God's golden fruit to be
plucked by the hand of prayer. Promises are God's incorruptible seed, to be sown
and tilled by prayer.
Prayer and the promises
are interdependent. The promise inspires and energizes prayer, but prayer
locates the promise, and gives it realization and location. The promise is like
the blessed rain falling in full showers, but prayer, like the pipes, which
transmit, preserve and direct the rain, localizes and precipitates these
promises, until they become local and personal, and bless, refresh and
fertilize. Prayer takes hold of the promise and conducts it to its marvellous
ends, removes the obstacles, and makes a highway for the promise to its glorious
fulfillment.
While God's promises are
"exceeding great and precious," they are specific, clear and personal. How
pointed and plain God's promise to
Abraham:
"And
the angel of the Lord called unto Abraham out of heaven the second
time,
"And said, By myself have I sworn, saith
the Lord, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son,
thine only son;
"That in blessing I will bless
thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and as
the sand which is upon the seashore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his
enemies;
"And in thy seed shall all the nations
of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my
voice."
But
Rebekah through whom the promise is to flow is childless. Her barren womb forms
an invincible obstacle to the fulfillment of God's promise. But in the course of
time children are born to her.
Isaac becomes a
man of prayer through whom the promise is to be realized, and so we
read:
"And
Isaac entreated the Lord for his wife, because she was barren, and the Lord was
entreated for him, and Rebekah his wife
conceived."
Isaac's
praying opened the way for the fulfilment of God's promise, and carried it on to
its marvellous fulfillment, and made the promise effectual in bringing forth
marvellous results.
God spoke to Jacob and made
definite promises to
him:
"Return
unto the land of thy fathers, and to thy kindred, and I will be with
thee."
Jacob
promptly moves out on the promise, but Esau confronts him with his awakened
vengeance and his murderous intention, more dreadful because of the long years,
unappeased and waiting. Jacob throws himself directly on God's promise by a
night of prayer, first in quietude and calmness, and then when the stillness,
the loneliness and the darkness of the night are upon him, he makes the
all-night wrestling
prayer.
"With
thee I mean all night to stay,
And wrestle till the break of
day."
God's
being is involved, His promise is at stake, and much is involved in the issue.
Esau's temper, his conduct and his character are involved. It is a notable
occasion. Much depends upon it. Jacob pursues his case and presses his plea with
great struggles and hard wrestling. It is the highest form of importunity. But
the victory is gained at last. His name and nature are changed and he becomes a
new and different man. Jacob himself is saved first of all. He is blessed in his
life and soul. But more still is accomplished. Esau undergoes a radical change
of mind. He who came forth with hate and revenge in his heart against his own
brother, seeking Jacob's destruction, is strangely and wonderfully affected, and
he is changed and his whole attitude toward his brother becomes radically
different. And when the two brothers meet, love takes the place of fear and
hate, and they vie with each other in showing true brotherly
affection.
The promise of God is fulfilled. But
it took that all night of importunate praying to do the deed. It took that
fearful night of wrestling on Jacob's part to make the promise sure and cause it
to bear fruit. Prayer wrought the marvellous deed. So prayer of the same kind
will produce like results in this day. It was God's promise and Jacob's praying
which crowned and crowded the results so
wondrously.
"Go show thyself to Ahab and I will
send rain on the earth," was God's command and promise to His servant Elijah
after the sore famine had cursed the land. Many glorious results marked that day
of heroic faith and dauntless courage on Elijah's part. The sublime issue with
Israel had been successful, the fire had fallen, Israel had been reclaimed, the
prophets of Baal had been killed, but there was no rain. The one thing, the only
thing, which God had promised, had not been given. The day was declining, and
the awestruck crowds were faint, and yet held by an invisible
hand.
Elijah turns from Israel to God and from
Baal to the one source of help for a final issue and a final victory. But seven
times is the restless eagerness of the prophet stayed. Not till the seventh
repeated time is his vigilance rewarded and the promise pressed to its final
fulfillment. Elijah's fiery, relentless praying bore to its triumphant results
the promise of God, and rain descended in full
showers.
"Thy
promise, Lord, is ever
sure,
And
they that in Thy house would dwell
That happy
station to
secure,
Must
still in holiness
excel."
Our
prayers are too little and feeble to execute the purposes or to claim the
promises of God with appropriating power. Marvellous purposes need marvellous
praying to execute them. Miracle-making promises need miracle-making praying to
realize them. Only Divine praying can operate Divine promises or carry out
Divine purposes. How great, how sublime, and how exalted are the promises God
makes to His people! How eternal are the purposes of God! Why are we so
impoverished in experience and so low in life when God's promises are so
"exceeding great and precious"? Why do the eternal purposes of God move so
tardily? Why are they so poorly executed? Our failure to appropriate the Divine
promises and rest our faith on them, and to pray believingly is the solution.
"We have not because we ask not." "We ask and receive not because we ask
amiss."
Prayer is based on the purpose and
promise of God. Prayer is submission to God. Prayer has no sigh of disloyalty
against God's will. It may cry out against the bitterness and the dread weight
of an hour of unutterable anguish: "If it be possible, let this cup pass from
me." But it is surcharged with the sweetest and promptest submission. "Yet not
my will, but thine be done."
But prayer in its
usual uniform and deep current is conscious conformity to God's will, based upon
the direct promise of God's Word, and under the illumination and application of
the Holy Spirit. Nothing is surer than that the Word of God is the sure
foundation of prayer. We pray just as we believe God's Word. Prayer is based
directly and specifically upon God's revealed promises in Christ Jesus. It has
no other ground upon which to base its plea. All else is shadowy, sandy, fickle.
Not our feelings, not our merits, not our works, but God's promise is the basis
of faith and the solid ground of
prayer.
"Now
I have found the ground
wherein
Sure
my soul's anchor may remain;
The wounds of
Jesus -- for my
sin,
Before
the world's foundation
slain."
The
converse of this proposition is also true. God's promises are dependent and
conditioned upon prayer to appropriate them and make them a conscious
realization. The promises are inwrought in us, appropriated by us, and held in
the arms of faith by prayer. Let it be noted that prayer gives the promises
their efficiency, localizes and appropriates them, and utilizes them. Prayer
puts the promises to practical and present uses. Prayer puts the promises as the
seed in the fructifying soil. Promises, like the rain, are general. Prayer
embodies, precipitates, and locates them for personal use. Prayer goes by faith
into the great fruit orchard of God's exceeding great and precious promises, and
with hand and heart picks the ripest and richest fruit. The promises, like
electricity, may sparkle and dazzle and yet be impotent for good till these
dynamic, life-giving currents are chained by prayer, and are made the mighty
forces which move and bless.
Every promise of Scripture is a writing of God, which may be
pleaded before Him with this reasonable request: "Do as Thou hast said." The
Creator will not cheat His creature who depends upon His truth; and, far more,
the Heavenly Father will not break His word to His own child. "Remember the
word unto Thy servant, on which Thou hast caused me to hope," is most
prevalent pleading. It is a double argument: It is Thy Word, wilt Thou not
keep it? Why hast Thou spoken of it if Thou wilt not make it good? Thou hast
caused me to hope in it; wilt Thou disappoint the hope which Thou hast Thyself
begotten in me? -- C. H.
SPURGEON
THE great
promises find their fulfillment along the lines of prayer. They inspire prayer,
and through prayer the promises flow out to their full realization and bear
their ripest fruit.
The magnificent and
sanctifying promise in Ezekiel, thirty-sixth chapter, a promise finding its
full, ripe, and richest fruit in the New Testament, is an illustration of how
the promise waits on
prayer:
"Then
will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean; from all your
filthiness, and from all your idols will I cleanse
you.
"A new heart also will I give you, and a
new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of
your flesh, and I will give you a heart of
flesh.
"And I will put my Spirit within you,
and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments and do
them.
"And ye shall dwell in the land that I
gave to your fathers; and ye shall be my people, and I will be your
God."
And
concerning this promise, and this work, God definitely
says:
"I will
yet for this be inquired of by the house of Israel, to do it for
them."
The
more truly men have prayed for these rich things, the more fully have they
entered into this exceeding great and precious promise, for in its initial, and
final results as well as in all of its processes, realized, it is entirely
dependent on
prayer.
"Give
me a new, a perfect
heart,
From
doubt, and fear, and sorrow free;
The mind which
was in Christ
impart,
And
let my spirit cleave to
thee.
"O take
this heart of stone away!
Thy
sway it doth not, cannot
own;
In me no
longer let it
stay;
O
take away this heart of
stone!"
No
new heart ever throbbed with its pulsations of Divine life in one whose lips
have never sought in prayer with contrite spirit, that precious boon of a
perfect heart of love and cleanness. God never has put His Spirit into the realm
of a human heart which had never invoked by ardent praying the coming and
indwelling of the Holy Spirit. A prayerless spirit has no affinity for a clean
heart. Prayer and a pure heart go hand in hand. Purity of heart follows praying,
while prayer is the natural, spontaneous outflowing of a heart made clean by the
blood of Jesus Christ.
In this connection let
it be noted that God's promises are always personal and specific. They are not
general, indefinite, vague. They do not have to do with multitudes and classes
of people in a mass, but are directed to individuals. They deal with persons.
Each believer can claim the promise as his own. God deals with each one
personally. So that every saint can put the promises to the test. "Prove me now
herewith, saith the Lord." No need of generalizing, nor of being lost in
vagueness. The praying saint has the right to put his hand upon the promise and
claim it as his own, one made especially to him, and one intended to embrace all
his needs, present and
future.
"Though
troubles
assail,
And
dangers affright,
Though friends
should all
fail,
And
foes all
unite,
Yet
one thing secures
us,
Whatever
betide,
The
promise assures
us,
The
Lord will
provide."
Jeremiah
once said, speaking of the captivity of Israel and of its ending, speaking for
Almighty God: "After seventy years be accomplished at Babylon, I will visit you,
and will perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return to this
place."
But this strong and definite promise of
God was accompanied by these words, coupling the promise with prayer: "Then
shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto
you. And ye shall seek me and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your
heart." This seems to indicate very clearly that the promise was dependent for
its fulfillment on prayer.
In Daniel we have
this record, "I, Daniel, understood by books the number of the years whereof the
word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, the prophet, that he would accomplish seventy
years in the desolations of Jerusalem. And I set my face unto the Lord God to
seek by prayer and supplications with fastings and sackcloth and
ashes."
So Daniel, as the time of the captivity
was expiring, set himself in mighty prayer in order that the promise should be
fulfilled and the captivity be brought to an end. It was God's promise by
Jeremiah and Daniel's praying which broke the chains of Babylonish captivity,
set Israel free and brought God's ancient people back to their native land. The
promise and prayer went together to carry out God's purpose and to execute His
plans.
God had promised through His prophets
that the coming Messiah should have a forerunner. How many homes and wombs in
Israel had longed for the coming to them of this great honour! Perchance
Zacharias and Elizabeth were the only ones who were trying to realize by prayer
this great dignity and blessing. At least we do know that the angel said to
Zacharias, as he announced to him the coming of this great personage, "Thy
prayer is heard." It was then that the word of the Lord as spoken by the
prophets and the prayer of the old priest and his wife brought John the Baptist
into the withered womb, and into the childless home of Zacharias and
Elizabeth.
The promise given to Paul, engraven
on his apostolic commission, as related by him after his arrest in Jerusalem,
when he was making his defense before King Agrippa, was on this wise:
"Delivering thee from the people and from the Gentiles, unto whom I now send
thee.'' How did Paul make this promise efficient? How did he make the promise
real? Here is the answer. In trouble by men, Jew and Gentile, pressed by them
sorely, he writes to his brethren at Rome, with a pressing request for
prayer:
"Now
I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake, and for the love of
the Spirit, that ye strive together with me in your prayers to God for
me;
"That I may be delivered from them that do
not believe in
Judea."
Their
prayers, united with his prayer, were to secure his deliverance and secure his
safety, and were also to make the apostolic promise vital and cause it to be
fully realized.
All is to be sanctified and
realized by the Word of God and prayer. God's deep and wide river of promise
will turn into the deadly miasma or be lost in the morass, if we do not utilize
these promises by prayer, and receive their full and life-giving waters into our
hearts.
The promise of the Holy Spirit to the
disciples was in a very marked way the "Promise of the Father," but it was only
realized after many days of continued and importunate praying. The promise was
clear and definite that the disciples should be endued with power from on high,
but as a condition of receiving that power of the Holy Spirit, they were
instructed to "tarry in the city of Jerusalem till ye be endued with power from
on high." The fulfillment of the promise depended upon the "tarrying." The
promise of this "enduement of power" was made sure by prayer. Prayer sealed it
to glorious results. So we find it written, "These continued with one accord, in
prayer and supplication, with the women." And it is significant that it was
while they were praying, resting their expectations on the surety of the
promise, that the Holy Spirit fell upon them and they were all "filled with the
Holy Ghost." The promise and the prayer went hand in
hand.
After Jesus Christ made this large and
definite promise to His disciples, He ascended on high, and was seated at His
Father's right hand of exaltation and power. Yet the promise given by Him of
sending the Holy Spirit was not fulfilled by His enthronement merely, nor by the
promise only, nor by the fact that the Prophet Joel had foretold with
transported raptures of the bright day of the Spirit's coming. Neither was it
that the Spirit's coming was the only hope of God's cause in this world. All
these all-powerful and all-engaging reasons were not the immediate operative
cause of the coming of the Holy Spirit. The solution is found in the attitude of
the disciples. The answer is found in the fact that the disciples, with the
women, spent several days in that upper room, in earnest, specific, continued
prayer. It was prayer that brought to pass the famous day of Pentecost. And as
it was then, so it can be now. Prayer can bring a Pentecost in this day if there
be the same kind of praying, for the promise has not exhausted its power and
vitality. The "promise of the Father" still holds good for the present-day
disciples.
Prayer, mighty prayer, united,
continued, earnest prayer, for nearly two weeks, brought the Holy Spirit to the
Church and to the world in Pentecostal glory and power. And mighty continued and
united prayer will do the same
now.
"Lord
God, the Holy
Ghost,
In
this accepted hour;
As on the day of
Pentecost,
Descend
in all Thy
power.
"We
meet with one
accord,
In
our appointed place,
And wait the
promise of our
Lord,
The
Spirit of all
grace."
Nor
must it be passed by that the promises of God to sinners of every kind and
degree are equally sure and steadfast, and are made real and true by the earnest
cries of all true penitents. It is just as true with the Divine promises made to
the unsaved when they repent and seek God, that they are realized in answer to
the prayers of broken-hearted sinners, as it is true that the promises to
believers are realized in answer to their prayers. The promise of pardon and
peace was the basis of the prayers of Saul of Tarsus during those days of
darkness and distress in the house of Judas, when the Lord told Ananias in order
to allay his fears, "Behold he prayeth."
The
promise of mercy and an abundant pardon is tied up with seeking God and caring
upon Him by
Isaiah:
"Seek
ye the Lord while he may be found, and call ye upon him while he is
near.
"Let the wicked forsake his way and the
unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have
mercy, and to our God, for he will abundantly
pardon."
The
praying sinner receives mercy because his prayer is grounded on the promise of
pardon made by Him whose right it is to pardon guilty sinners. The penitent
seeker after God obtains mercy because there is a definite promise of mercy to
all who seek the Lord in repentance and faith. Prayer always brings forgiveness
to the seeking soul. The abundant pardon is dependent upon the promise made real
by the promise of God to the sinner.
While
salvation is promised to him who believes, the believing sinner is always a
praying sinner. God has no promise of pardon for a prayerless sinner just as He
has no promise for the prayerless professor of religion. "Behold he prayeth" is
not only the unfailing sign of sincerity and the evidence that the sinner is
proceeding in the right way to find God, but it is the unfailing prophecy of an
abundant pardon. Get the sinner to praying according to the Divine promise, and
he then is near the kingdom of God. The very best sign of the returning prodigal
is that he confesses his sins and begins to ask for the lowliest place in his
father's house.
It is the Divine promise of
mercy, of forgiveness and of adoption which gives the poor sinner hope. This
encourages him to pray. This moves him in distress to cry out, "Jesus, thou Son
of David, have mercy upon
me."
"Thy
promise is my only
plea,
With
this I venture nigh;
Thou call'st the
burdened soul to
Thee,
And
such, O Lord, am
I."
How
large are the promises made to the saint! How great the promises given to poor,
hungry-hearted, lost sinners, ruined by the fall! And prayer has arms sufficient
to encompass them all, and prove them. How great the encouragement to all souls,
these promises of God! How firm the ground on which to rest our faith! How
stimulating to prayer! What firm ground on which to base our pleas in
praying!
The
Lord hath promised good to
me,
His
word my hope secures;
He will my
shield and portion
be
As
long as life endures."
The Holy Ghost comes down into our hearts sometimes in prayer
with a beam from heaven, whereby we see more at once of God and His glory,
more astounding thoughts and enlarged apprehensions God, many beams meeting in
one and falling to the center of our hearts. By these coming downs or divine
influxes, God slides into our hearts by beams of Himself; we come not to have
communion with God by way of many broken thoughts put together, but there is a
contraction of many beams from heaven, which is shed into our souls, so that
we know more of God and have more communion with Him in a quarter-hour than we
could know in a year by the way of wisdom only. -- THOS.
GOODWIN
HOW vast are
the possibilities of prayer! How wide is its reach! What great things are
accomplished by this divinely appointed means of grace! It lays its hand on
Almighty God and moves Him to do what He would not otherwise do if prayer was
not offered. It brings things to pass which would never otherwise occur. The
story of prayer is the story of great achievements. Prayer is a wonderful power
placed by Almighty God in the hands of His saints, which may be used to
accomplish great purposes and to achieve unusual results. Prayer reaches to
everything, takes in all things great and small which are promised by God to the
children of men. The only limits to prayer are the promises of God and His
ability to fulfill those promises. "Open thy mouth wide and I will fill it."
The records of prayer's achievements are
encouraging to faith, cheering to the expectations of saints, and an inspiration
to all who would pray and test its value. Prayer is no mere untried theory. It
is not some strange unique scheme, concocted in the brains of men, and set on
foot by them, an invention which has never been tried nor put to the test.
Prayer is a Divine arrangement in the moral government of God, designed for the
benefit of men and intended as a means for furthering the interests of His cause
on earth, and carrying out His gracious purposes in redemption and providence.
Prayer proves itself. It is susceptible of proving its virtue by those who pray.
Prayer needs no proof other than its accomplishments. "If any man will do his
will, he shall know of the doctrine." If any man will know the virtue of prayer,
if he will know what it will do, let him pray. Let him put prayer to the
test.
What a breadth is given to prayer! What
heights it reaches! It is the breathing of a soul inflamed for God, and inflamed
for man. It goes as far as the Gospel goes, and is as wide, compassionate and
prayerful as is that Gospel.
How much of prayer
do all these unpossessed, alienated provinces of earth demand in order to
enlighten them, to impress them and to move them toward God and His Son, Jesus
Christ? Had the professed disciples of Christ only have prayed in the past as
they ought to have done, the centuries would not have found these provinces
still bound in death, in sin, and in
ignorance.
Alas! how the unbelief of men has
limited the power of God to work through prayer! What limitations have disciples
of Jesus Christ put upon prayer by their prayerlessness! How the Church, with
her neglect of prayer, has hedged about the Gospel and shut up doors of
access!
Prayer possibilities open doors for the
entrance of the Gospel: "Withal praying also for us that God would open to us a
door of utterance." Prayer opened for the Apostles doors of utterance, created
opportunities and made openings to preach the Gospel. The appeal by prayer was
to God, because God was moved by prayer. God was thereby moved to do His own
work in an enlarged way and by new ways. Prayer possibility gives not only great
power, and opens doors to the Gospel, but gives facility as well to the Gospel.
Prayer makes the Gospel to go fast and to move with glorious fastness. A Gospel
projected by the mighty energies of prayer is neither slow, lazy nor dull. It
moves with God's power, with God's effulgence and with angelic
swiftness.
"Brethren, pray for us that the word
of the Lord may have free course and be glorified," is the request of the
Apostle Paul, whose faith reached to the possibilities of prayer for the
preached Word. The Gospel moves altogether too slowly, often timidly, and with
feeble steps. What will make this Gospel go rapidly like a race runner? What
will give this Gospel Divine effulgence and glory, and cause it to move worthy
of God and of Christ? The answer is at hand. Prayer, more prayer, better prayer
will do the deed. This means of grace will give fast going, splendour and
divinity to the Gospel.
The possibilities of
prayer reach to all things. Whatever concerns man's highest welfare, and
whatever has to do with God's plans and purposes concerning men on earth, is a
subject for prayer. In "whatsoever ye shall ask," is embraced all that concerns
us or the children of men and God. And whatever is left out of "whatsoever" is
left out of prayer. Where will we draw the lines which leave out or which will
limit the word "whatsoever"? Define it, and search out and publish the things
which the word does not include. If "whatsoever" does not include all things,
then add to it the word "anything." "If ye shall ask anything in my name, I will
do it."
What
riches of grace, what blessings, spiritual and temporal, what good for time and
eternity, would have been ours had we learned the possibilities of prayer and
our faith had taken in the wide range of the Divine promises to us to answer
prayer! What blessings on our times and what furtherance to God's cause had we
but learned how to pray with large expectations! Who will rise up in this
generation and teach the Church this lesson? It is a child's lesson in
simplicity, but who has learned it well enough to put prayer to the test? It is
a great lesson in its matchless and universal good. The possibilities of prayer
are unspeakable, but the lesson of prayer which realizes and measures up to
these possibilities, who has learned?
In His
discourse in John, fifteenth chapter, our Lord seems to connect friendship for
Him with that of prayer, and His choosing of His disciples seemed to have been
with a design that through prayer they should bear much
fruit.
"Ye
are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command
you.
"Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen
you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your
fruit should remain; that whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he may
give it to
you."
Jesus
puts fruit-bearing and fruit-remaining, ripe, unwithered, and rich fruit, that
prayer might come to its full possibilities in order that the Father might give.
Here we have again the undefined and unlimited word, "whatsoever," as covering
the rights and the things for which we are to pray in the possibilities of
prayer.
We have still another declaration from
Jesus:
"Verily,
verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will
give it to you.
"Hitherto ye have asked nothing
in my name; ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be
full."
Here
is a very definite exhortation from our Lord to largeness in praying. Here we
are definitely urged by Him to ask for large things, and announced with the
dignity and solemnity indicated by the double amen, "Verily, Verily." Why these
marvellous urgencies in this last recorded and vital conversation of our Lord
with His disciples? The answer is that our Lord might prepare them for the New
Dispensation, in which prayer was to have such marvellous results, and in which
prayer was to be the chief agency to conserve and make aggressive His
Gospel.
In our Lord's language to His disciples
about choosing them that should bear fruit, in this affluent statement of our
Lord, He clearly teaches us that this matter of praying and fruit-bearing is not
a petty business of our choice, or a secondary matter in relation to other
matters, but that He has chosen us for this very business of praying. He had
specially in mind our praying, and He has chosen us of His own Divine selection,
and He expects us to do this one thing of praying and to do it intelligently and
well. For He before says that He had made us His friends, and had brought us
into bosom confidence with Him, and also into free and full conference with Him.
The main object of choosing us as His disciples and of friendship for Him was
that we might be the better fitted to bear the fruit of
prayer.
Let us not forget that we are noting
the possibilities of the true praying ones. "Anything" is the word of area and
circumference. How far it reaches we may not know. How wide it spreads, our
minds fail to discover. What is there which is not within its reach? Why does
Jesus repeat and exhaust these words, all-inclusive and boundless words, if He
does not desire to emphasize the unbounded magnificence and illimitable
munificence of prayer? Why does He press men to pray, so that our very poverty
might be enriched and our limitless inheritance by prayer be
secured?
We affirm with absolute certainty that
Almighty God answers prayer. The vast possibilities and the urgent necessity of
prayer lie in this stupendous fact that God hears and answers prayer. And God
hears and answers all prayer. He hears and answers every prayer, where the true
conditions of praying are met. Either this is so or it is not. If not, then is
there nothing in prayer. Then prayer is but the recitation of words, a mere
verbal performance, an empty ceremony. Then prayer is an altogether useless
exercise. But if what we have said is true, then are there vast possibilities in
prayer. Then is it far reaching in its scope, and wide is its range. Then is it
true that prayer can lay its hand upon Almighty God and move Him to do great and
wonderful things.
The benefits, the
possibilities and the necessity of prayer are not merely subjective but are
peculiarly objective in their character. Prayer aims at a definite object.
Prayer has a direct design in view. Prayer always has something specific before
the mind's eye. There may be some subjective benefits which accrue from praying,
but this is altogether secondary and incidental. Prayer always drives directly
at an object and seeks to secure a desired end. Prayer is asking, seeking and
knocking at a door for something we have not, which we desire, and which God has
promised to us.
Prayer is a direct address to
God. "In everything let your requests be made known unto God." Prayer secures
blessings, and makes men better because it reaches the ear of God. Prayer is
only for the betterment of men when it has affected God and moved Him to do
something for men. Prayer affects men by affecting God. Prayer moves men because
it moves God to move men. Prayer influences men by influencing God to influence
them. Prayer moves the hand that moves the
world.
"That
power is prayer, which soars on
high,
Through
Jesus to the throne;
And moves the
hand which moves the
world,
To
bring salvation
down."
The
utmost possibilities of prayer have rarely been realized. The promises of God
are so great to those who truly pray, when He puts Himself so fully into the
hands of the praying ones, that it almost staggers our faith and causes us to
hesitate with astonishment. His promise to answer, and to do and to give "all
things," "anything," "whatsoever," and "all things whatsoever," are so large, so
great, so exceeding broad, that we stand back in amazement and give ourselves to
questioning and doubt. We "stagger at the promises through unbelief." Really the
promises of God to prayer have been pared down by us to our little faith, and
have been brought down to the low level of our narrow notions about God's
ability, liberality and resources. Let us ever keep in mind and never for one
moment allow ourselves to doubt the statement that God means what He says in all
of His promises. God's promises are His own word. His veracity is at stake in
them. To question them is to doubt His veracity. He cannot afford to prove
faithless to His word. "In hope of eternal life, which God that cannot lie,
promised before the world began." His promises are for plain people, and He
means to do for all who pray just what He says He will do. "For He is faithful
that hath promised."
Unfortunately we have
failed to lay ourselves out in praying. We have limited the Holy One of Israel.
The ability to pray can be secured by the grace and power of the Holy Spirit,
but it demands so strenuous and high a character that it is a rare thing for a
man or woman to be on "praying ground and on pleading terms with God." It is as
true to-day as it was in the days of Elijah, that "the fervent, effectual prayer
of a righteous man availeth much." How much such a prayer avails, who can
tell?
The possibilities of prayer are the
possibilities of faith. Prayer and faith are Siamese twins. One heart animates
them both. Faith is always praying. Prayer is always believing. Faith must have
a tongue by which it can speak. Prayer is the tongue of faith. Faith must
receive. Prayer is the hand of faith stretched out to receive. Prayer must rise
and soar. Faith must give prayer the wings to fly and soar. Prayer must have an
audience with God. Faith opens the door, and access and audience are given.
Prayer asks. Faith lays its hand on the thing asked
for.
God's omnipotent power is the basis of
omnipotent faith and omnipotent praying. "All things are possible to him that
believeth," and "all things whatsoever" are given to him who prays. God's decree
and death yield readily to Hezekiah's faith and prayer. When God's promise and
man's praying are united by faith, then "nothing shall be impossible."
Importunate prayer is so all-powerful and irresistable that it obtains promises,
or wins where the prospect and the promise seem to be against it. In fact, the
New Testament promise includes all things in heaven and in earth. God, by
promise, puts all things He possesses into man's hands. Prayer and faith put man
in possession of this boundless inheritance.
Prayer is not an indifferent or a small thing.
It is not a sweet little privilege. It is a great prerogative, far-reaching in
its effects. Failure to pray entails losses far beyond the person who neglects
it. Prayer is not a mere episode of the Christian life. Rather the whole life is
a preparation for and and the result of prayer. In its condition, prayer is the
sum of religion. Faith is but a channel of prayer. Faith gives it wings and
swiftness. Prayer is the lungs through which holiness breathes. Prayer is not
only the language of spiritual life, but makes its very essence and forms its
real
character.
"O
for a faith that will not
shrink
Though
pressed by every
foe;
That will
not tremble on the
brink
Of
any earthly
woe.
"Lord,
give us such a faith as
this,
And
then, whate'er may
come,
We'll taste
e'en here, the hallowed
bliss
Of
our eternal home."
He who has the spirit of prayer has the highest interest in the
court of heaven. And the only way to retain it is to keep it in constant
employment. Apostasy begins in the closet. No man ever backslid from the life
and power of Christianity who continued constant and fervent in private
prayer. He who prays without ceasing is likely to rejoice evermore. --
ADAM CLARKE
AFTER a
comprehensive and cursory view of the possibilities of prayer, as mapped out in
what has been said, it is important to descend to particulars, to Bible facts
and principles in regard to this great subject. What are the possibilities of
prayer as disclosed by Divine revelation? The necessity of prayer and its being
are coexistent with man. Nature, even before a clear and full revelation, cries
out in prayer. Man is, therefore prayer is. God is, therefore prayer is. Prayer
is born of the instincts, the needs and the cravings and the very being of man.
The prayer of Solomon at the dedication of the
temple is the product of inspired wisdom and piety, and gives a lucid and
powerful view of prayer in the wideness of its range, the minuteness of its
details, and its abounding possibilities and its urgent necessity. How minute
and exactly comprehending is this prayer! National and individual blessings are
in it, and temporal and spiritual good is embraced by it. Individual sins,
national calamities, sins, sickness, exile, famine, war, pestilence, mildew,
drought, insects, damage to crops, whatever affects husbandry,
enemies-whatsoever sickness, one's own sore, one's own guilt, one's own sin --
one and all are in this prayer, and all are for
prayer.
For all these evils prayer is the one
universal remedy. Pure praying remedies all ills, cures all diseases, relieves
all situations, however dire, most calamitous, most fearful and despairing.
Prayer to God, pure praying, relieves dire situations because God can relieve
when no one else can. Nothing is too hard for God. No cause is hopeless which
God undertakes. No case is mortal when Almighty God is the physician. No
conditions are despairing which can deter or defy
God.
Almighty God heard this prayer of Solomon,
and committed Himself to undertake, to relieve and to remedy if real praying be
done, despite all adverse and inexorable conditions. He will always relieve,
answer and bless if men will pray from the heart, and if they will give
themselves to real, true praying.
After Solomon
had finished his magnificent, illimitable and all-comprehending prayer, this is
the record of what God said to
him:
"And the
Lord appeared to Solomon by night, and said to him, I have heard thy prayer, and
have chosen this place to myself for a house of
sacrifice.
"If I shut up heaven that there be
no rain, or if I command the locusts that they devour the land, or if I send
pestilence among the people;
"If my people
which are called by my name, shall humble themselves and pray, and seek my face,
and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive
their sin, and will heal their land;
"Now my
eyes shall be open, and my ears attentive to the prayer that is made in this
place.
"For now I have chosen and sanctified
this house, that my name may be there
forever."
God
put no limitation to His ability to save through true praying. No hopeless
conditions, no accumulation of difficulties, and no desperation in distance or
circumstance can hinder the success of real prayer. The possibilities of prayer
are linked to the infinite rectitude and to the omnipotent power of God. There
is nothing too hard for God to do. God is pledged that if we ask, we shall
receive. God can withhold nothing from faith and
prayer.
"The
thing surpasses all my
thought,
But
faithful is my Lord;
Through unbelief
I stagger
not,
For
God hath spoke the
word.
"Faith,
mighty faith, the promise
sees,
And
looks to that alone;
Laughs at
impossibilities,
And
cries, 'It shall be
done!'"
The
many statements of God's Word fully set forth the possibilities and far-reaching
nature of prayer. How full of pathos! "Call upon me in the day of trouble; I
will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me." Again, read the cheering words:
"He shall call upon me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I
will deliver him and honour him."
How
diversified the range of trouble! How almost infinite its extent! How universal
and dire its conditions! How despairing its waves! Yet the range of prayer is as
great as trouble, is as universal as sorrow, as infinite as grief. And prayer
can relieve all these evils which come to the children of men. There is no tear
which prayer cannot wipe away or dry up. There is no depression of spirits which
it cannot relieve and elevate. Where is no despair which it cannot
dispel.
"Call unto me, and I will answer thee,
and show thee great things and difficult, which thou knowest not." How broad
these words of the Lord, how great the promise, how cheering to faith! They
really challenge the faith of the saint. Prayer always brings God to our relief
to bless and to aid, and brings marvellous revelations of His power. What
impossibilities are there with God? Name them. "Nothing," He says, "is
impossible to the Lord." And all the possibilities in God are in
prayer.
Samuel, under the Judges of Israel,
will fully illustrate the possibility and the necessity of prayer. He himself
was the beneficiary of the greatness of faith and prayer in a mother who knew
what praying meant. Hannah, his mother, was a woman of mark, in character and in
piety, who was childless. That privation was a source of worry and weakness and
grief. She sought unto God for relief, and prayed and poured out her soul before
the Lord. She continued her praying, in fact she multiplied her praying, to such
an extent that to Old Eli she seemed to be intoxicated, almost beside herself in
the intensity of her supplications. She was specific in her prayers. She wanted
a child. For a man child she prayed.
And God
was specific in His answer. A man child God gave her, a man indeed he became. He
was the creation of prayer, and grew himself to a man of prayer. He was a mighty
intercessor, especially in emergencies in the history of God's people. The
epitome of his life and character is found in the statement, "Samuel cried unto
the Lord for Israel, and the Lord heard him." The victory was complete, and the
Ebenezer was the memorial of the possibilities and necessity of
prayer.
Again, at another time, Samuel called
unto the Lord, and thunder and rain came out of season in wheat harvest. Here
are some statements concerning this mighty intercessor, who knew how to pray,
and whom God always regarded when he prayed: "Samuel cried unto the Lord all
night."
Says he at another time in speaking to
the Lord's people, "Moreover, as for me, God forbid that I should sin against
the Lord in ceasing to pray for you."
These
great occasions show how this notable ruler of Israel made prayer a habit, and
that this was a notable and conspicuous characteristic of his dispensation.
Prayer was no strange exercise to Samuel. He was accustomed to it. He was in the
habit of praying, knew the way to God, and received answers from God. Through
him and his praying God's cause was brought out of its low, depressed condition,
and a great national revival began, of which David was one of its
fruits.
Samuel was one of the notable men of
the Old Dispensation who stood out prominently as one who had great influence
with God in prayer. God could not deny him anything he asked of Him. Samuel's
praying always affected God, and moved God to do what would not have otherwise
been done had he not prayed. Samuel stands out as a striking illustration of the
possibilities of prayer. He shows conclusively the achievements of
prayer.
Jacob is an illustration for all time
of the commanding and conquering forces of prayer. God came to him as an
antagonist. He grappled Jacob, and shook him as if he were in the embrace of a
deadly foe. Jacob, the deceitful supplanter, the wily, unscrupulous trader, had
no eyes to see God. His perverted principles, and his deliberate overreaching
and wrong-doing had blinded his vision.
To
reach God, to know God, and to conquer God, that was the demand of this critical
hour. Jacob was alone, and all night witnessed to the intensity of the struggle,
its changing issues, and its veering fortunes, as well as the receding and
advancing lines in the conflict. Here was the strength of weakness, the power of
self-despair, the energy of perseverance, the elevation of humility, and the
victory of surrender. Jacob's salvation issued from the forces which he massed
in that all-night conflict.
He prayed and wept
and importuned until the fiery hate of Esau's heart died and it was softened
into love. A greater miracle was wrought on Jacob than on Esau. His name, his
character and his destiny were all changed by that all-night praying. Here is
the record of the results of that night's praying struggle: "As a prince hast
thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed." "By his strength he had
power with God, yea, he had power over the angel and
prevailed."
What forces lie in importunate
prayer! What mighty results are gained by it in one night's struggle in praying!
God is affected and changed in attitude, and two men are transformed in
character and destiny.
Satan dreads nothing but prayer. . . . The Church that lost its
Christ was full of good works. Activities are multiplied that meditation may
be ousted, and organizations are increased that prayer may have no chance.
Souls may be lost in good works, as surely as in evil ways. The one concern of
the devil is to keep the saints from praying. He fears nothing from prayerless
studies, prayerless work, prayerless religion. He laughs at our toil, mocks at
our wisdom, but trembles when we pray. -- SAMUEL
CHADWICK
THE
possibilities of prayer are seen in its results in temporal matters. Prayer
reaches to everything which concerns man, whether it be his body, his mind or
his soul. Prayer embraces the very smallest things of life. Prayer takes in the
wants of the body, food, raiment, business, finances, in fact everything which
belongs to this life, as well as those things which have to do with the eternal
interests of the soul. Its achievements are seen not only in the large things of
earth, but more especially in what might be called the little things of life. It
brings to pass not only large things, speaking after the manner of men, but also
the small things.
Temporal matters are of a
lower order than the spiritual, but they concern us greatly. Our temporal
interests make up a great part of our lives. They are the main source of our
cares and worries. They have much to do with our religion. We have bodies, with
their wants, their pains, their disabilities and their limitations. That which
concerns our bodies necessarily engages our minds. These are subjects of prayer,
and prayer takes in all of them, and large are the accomplishments of prayer in
this realm of our king.
Our temporal matters
have much to do with our health and happiness. They form our relations. They are
tests of honesty and belong to the sphere of justice and righteousness. Not to
pray about temporal matters is to leave God out of the largest sphere of our
being. He who cannot pray in everything, as we are charged to do by Paul in
Philippians, fourth chapter, has never learned in any true sense the nature and
worth of prayer. To leave business and time out of prayer is to leave religion
and eternity out of it. He who does not pray about temporal matters cannot pray
with confidence about spiritual matters. He who does not put God by prayer in
his struggling toil for daily bread will never put Him in his struggle for
heaven. He who does not cover and supply the wants of the body by prayer will
never cover and supply the wants of his soul. Both body and soul are dependent
on God, and prayer is but the crying expression of that
dependence.
The Syrophenician woman prayed for
the health things. In fact the Old Testament is but the record of God in dealing
with His people through the Divine appointment of prayer. Abraham prayed that
Sodom might be saved from destruction. Abraham's servant prayed and received
God's direction in choosing a wife for Isaac. Hannah prayed, and Samuel was
given unto her. Elijah prayed, and no rain came for three years. And he prayed
again, and the clouds gave rain. Hezekiah was saved from a mortal sickness by
his praying. Jacob's praying saved him from Esau's revenge. The Old Bible is the
history of prayer for temporal blessings as well as for spiritual
blessings.
In the New Testament we have the
same principles illustrated and enforced. Prayer in this section of God's Word
covers the whole realm of good, both temporal and spiritual. Our Lord, in His
universal prayer, the prayer for humanity, in every clime, in every age and for
every condition, puts in it the petition, "Give us this day our daily bread."
This embraces all necessary earthly good.
In
the Sermon on the Mount, a whole paragraph is taken up by our Lord about food
and raiment, where He is cautioned against undue care or anxiety for these
things, and at the same time encouraging to a faith which takes in and claims
all these necessary bodily comforts and necessaries. And this teaching stands in
close connection with His teachings about prayer. Food and raiment are taught as
subjects of prayer. Not for one moment is it even hinted that they are things
beneath the notice of a great God, nor too material and earthly for such a
spiritual exercise as prayer.
The Syrophenician
woman prayed for the health of her daughter. Peter prayed for Dorcas to be
brought back to life. Paul prayed for the father of Publius on his way to Rome,
when cast on the island by a shipwreck, and God healed the man who was sick with
a fever. He urged the Christians at Rome to strive with him together in prayer
that he might be delivered from bad men.
When
Peter was put in prison by Herod, the Church was instant in prayer that Peter
might be delivered from the prison, and God honoured the praying of these early
Christians. John prayed that Gaius might "prosper and be in health, even as his
soul prospered."
The Divine directory in James,
fifth chapter, says: "Is any among you afflicted, let him pray. Is any sick
among you? Let him call for the elders of the Church, and let them pray over
him."
Paul, in writing to the Philippians,
fourth chapter, says: "Be careful for nothing; but in everything, by prayer and
supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God." This
provides for all kinds of cares business cares, home cares, body cares, and soul
cares. All are to be brought to God by prayer, and at the mercy seat our minds
and souls are to be disburdened of all that affects us or causes anxiety or
uneasiness. These words of Paul stand in close connection with what he says
about temporal matters specially: "But now I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that
now at the last your care of me hath flourished again: wherein ye were also
careful, but ye lacked opportunity. Not that I speak in respect to want, for I
have learned in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be
content."
And Paul closes his Epistle to these
Christians with the words, which embrace all temporal needs as well as spiritual
wants:
"But
my God shall supply all your need, according to his riches in glory, by Christ
Jesus."
Unbelief
in the doctrine that prayer covers all things which have to do with the body and
business affairs, breeds undue anxiety about earth's affairs, causes unnecessary
worry, and creates very unhappy states of mind. How much needless care would we
save ourselves if we but believed in prayer as the means of relieving those
cares, and would learn the happy art of casting all our cares in prayer upon
God, "who careth for us!" Unbelief in God as one who is concerned about even the
smallest affairs which affect our happiness and comfort limits the Holy One of
Israel, and makes our lives altogether devoid of real happiness and sweet
contentment.
We have in the instance of the
failure of the disciples to cast the devil out of the lunatic son, brought to
them by his father, while Jesus was on the Mount of Transfiguration, a
suggestive lesson of the union of faith, prayer and fasting, and the failure to
reach the possibilities and obligations of an occasion. The disciples ought to
have cast the devil out of the boy. They had been sent out to do this very work,
and had been empowered by their Lord and Master to do it. And yet they signally
failed. Christ reproved them with sharp upbraidings for not doing it. They had
been sent out on this very specific mission. This one thing was specified by our
Lord when He sent them out. Their failure brought shame and confession on them,
and discounted their Lord and Master and His cause. They brought Him into
disrepute, and reflected very seriously upon the cause which they represented.
Their faith to cast out the devil had signally failed, simply because it had not
been nurtured by prayer and fasting. Failure to pray broke the ability of faith,
and failure came because they had not the energy of a strong authoritative
faith.
The promise reads, and we cannot too
often refer to it, for it is the very basis of our faith and the ground on which
we stand when we pray: "All things whatsoever ye ask in prayer, believing, ye
shall receive." What enumeration table can tabulate, itemize, and aggregate "all
things whatsoever"? The possibilities of prayer and faith go to the length of
the endless chain, and cover the unmeasurable
area.
In Hebrews, eleventh chapter, the sacred
penman, wearied with trying to specify the examples of faith, and to recite the
wonderful exploits of faith, pauses a moment, and then cries out, giving us
almost unheard-of achievements of prayer and faith as exemplified by the saints
of the olden times. Here is what he
says:
"And
what shall I say more? For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon, of Barak,
of Samson, of Jephtha, of David also; and-Samuel, and the
prophets;
"Who through faith, subdued kingdoms,
wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of
lions;
"Quenched the violence of fire, escaped
the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight,
turned to flight the armies of the
aliens;
"Women received their dead raised to
life again, and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might
obtain a better
resurrection."
What
an illustrious record is this! What marvellous accomplishments, wrought not by
armies, or by man's superhuman strength, nor by magic, but all accomplished
simply by men and women noted alone for their faith and prayer! Hand in hand
with these records of faith's illimitable range are the illustrious records of
prayer, for they are all one. Faith has never won a victory nor gained a crown
where prayer was not the weapon of the victory, and where prayer did not jewel
the crown. If "all things are possible to him that believeth," then all things
are possible to him that
prayeth.
"Depend
on him; thou canst not
fail;
Make
all thy wants and wishes known:
Fear not; his
merits must
prevail;
Ask
but in faith, it shall be done."
Nothing so pleases God in connection with our prayer as our
praise, . . . and nothing so blesses the man who prays as the praise which he
offers. I got a great blessing once in China in this connection. I had
received bad and sad news from home, and deep shadows had covered my soul. I
prayed, but the darkness did not vanish. I summoned myself to endure, but the
darkness only deepened. Just then I went to an inland station and saw on the
wall of the mission home these words: "Try Thanksgiving." I did, and in a
moment every shadow was gone, not to return. Yes, the Psalmist was right, "It
is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord." -- HENRY W.
FROST
THE possibilities
of prayer are gauged by faith in God's ability to do. Faith is the one prime
condition by which God works. Faith is the one prime condition by which man
prays. Faith draws on God to its full extent. Faith gives character to prayer. A
feeble faith has always brought forth feeble praying. Vigorous faith creates
vigorous praying. At the close of a parable, "And he spake a parable unto them
to this end, that men always ought to pray, and not to faint," in which He
stressed the necessity of vigorous praying, Christ asks this pointed question,
"When the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?"
In the case of the lunatic child which the
father brought first to the disciples, who could not cure him, and then to the
Lord Jesus Christ, the father cried out with all the pathos of a declining faith
and of a great sorrow, "If thou canst do anything for us, have compassion on us
and help us." And Jesus said unto him, "If thou canst believe, all things are
possible to him that believeth." The healing turned on the faith in the ability
of Christ to heal the boy. The ability to do was in Christ essentially and
eternally, but the doing of the thing turned on the ability of the faith. Great
faith enables Christ to do great things.
We
need a quickening faith in God's power. We have hedged God in till we have
little faith in His power. We have conditioned the exercise of His power till we
have a little God, and a little faith in a little
God.
The only condition which restrains God's
power, and which disables Him to act, is unfaith. He is not limited in action
nor restrained by the conditions which limit
men.
The conditions of time, place, nearness,
ability and all others which could possibly be named, upon which the actions of
men hinge, have no bearing on God. If men will look to God and cry to Him with
true prayer, He will hear and can deliver, no matter how dire soever may be the
state, how remediless their conditions may
be.
Strange how God has to school His people in
His ability to do! He made a promise to Abraham and Sarah that Isaac would be
born. Abraham was then nearly one hundred years old, and Sarah was barren by
natural defect, and had passed into a barren, wombless age. She laughed at the
thought of having a child as preposterous. God asked, "Why did Sarah laugh? Is
anything too hard for the Lord?" And God fulfilled His promise to these old
people to the letter.
Moses hesitated to
undertake God's purpose to liberate Israel from Egyptian bondage, because of his
inability to talk well. God checks him at once by an
inquiry:
"And
Moses said unto the Lord, O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor
since thou hast spoken unto thy servant; but I am slow of speech and of a slow
tongue.
"And the Lord said unto him, Who hath
made man's mouth? or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind?
Have not I the Lord?
"Now, therefore, go, and I
will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt
say."
When
God said He would feed the children of Israel a whole month with meat, Moses
questioned His ability to do it. The Lord said unto Moses, "Is the Lord's hand
waxed short? Thou shalt see now whether my word shall come to pass unto thee or
not."
Nothing is too hard for the Lord to do.
As Paul declared, "He is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we can
ask or think." Prayer has to do with God, with His ability to do. The
possibility of prayer is the measure of God's ability to
do.
The "all things," the "all things
whatsoever," and the "anything," are all covered by the ability of God. The
urgent entreaty reads, "Ask whatsoever ye will," because God is able to do
anything and all things that my desires may crave, and that He has promised. In
God's ability to do, He goes far beyond man's ability to ask. Human thoughts,
human words, human imaginations, human desires and human needs, cannot in any
way measure God's ability to do.
Prayer in its
legitimate possibilities goes out on God Himself. Prayer goes out with faith not
only in the promise of God, but faith in God Himself, and in God's ability to
do. Prayer goes out not on the promise merely, but "obtains promises," and
creates promises.
Elijah had the promise that
God would send the rain, but no promise that He would send the fire. But by
faith and prayer he obtained the fire, as well as the rain, but the fire came
first.
Daniel had no specific promise that God
would make known to him the dream of the king, but he and his associates joined
in united prayer, and God revealed to Daniel the king's dream and the
interpretation, and their lives were spared
thereby.
Hezekiah had no promise that God would
cure him of his desperate sickness which threatened his life. On the contrary
the word of the Lord came to him by the mouth of the prophet, that he should
die. However, he prayed against this decree of Almighty God, with faith, and he
succeeded in obtaining a reversal of God's word and
lived.
God makes it marvellous when He says by
the mouth of His prophet: "Thus saith the Lord, the Holy One of Israel and his
Maker: Ask me of things to come, concerning my sons, and concerning the work of
my hands, command ye me." And in this strong promise in which He commits Himself
into the hands of His praying people, He appeals in it to His great creative
power: "I have created the earth and made man upon it. I, even my hands, have
stretched out the heavens, and all their hosts have I
commanded."
The majesty and power of God in
making man and man's world, and constantly upholding all things, are ever kept
before us as the basis of our faith in God, and as an assurance and urgency to
prayer. Then God calls us away from what He Himself has done, and turns our
minds to Himself personally. The infinite glory and power of His Person are set
before our contemplation: "Remember ye not the former things neither consider
the things of old?" He declares that He will do a "new thing," that He does not
have to repeat Himself, that all He has done neither limits His doing nor the
manner of His doing, and that if we have prayer and faith, He will so answer our
prayers and so work for us, that His former work shall not be remembered nor
come into mind. If men would pray as they ought to pray, the marvels of the past
would be more than reproduced. The Gospel would advance with a facility and
power it has never known. Doors would be thrown open to the Gospel, and the Word
of God would have a conquering force rarely if ever known
before.
If Christians prayed as Christians
ought, with strong commanding faith, with earnestness and sincerity, men,
God-called men, God-empowered men everywhere, would be all burning to go and
spread the Gospel world-wide. The Word of the Lord would run and be glorified as
never known heretofore. The God-influenced men, the God-inspired men, the
God-commissioned men, would go and kindle the flame of sacred fire for Christ,
salvation and heaven, everywhere in all nations, and soon all men would hear the
glad tidings of salvation and have an opportunity to receive Jesus Christ as
their personal Saviour. Let us read another one of those large illimitable
statements in God's Word, which are a direct challenge to prayer and
faith:
"He
that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not
with him freely give us all
things?"
What
a basis have we here for prayer and faith, illimitable, measureless in breadth,
in depth and in height! The promise to give us all things is backed up by the
calling to our remembrance of the fact that God freely gave His only Begotten
Son for our redemption. His giving His Son is the assurance and guarantee that
He will freely give all things to him who believes and
prays.
What confidence have we in this Divine
statement for inspired asking! What holy boldness we have here for the largest
asking! No commonplace tameness should restrain our largest asking. Large,
larger, and largest asking magnifies grace and adds to God's glory. Feeble
asking impoverishes the asker, and restrains God's purposes for the greatest
good and obscures His glory.
How enthroned,
magnificent and royal the intercession of our Lord Jesus Christ at His Father's
right hand in heaven! The benefits of His intercession flow to us through our
intercessions. Our intercession ought to catch by contagion, and by necessity
the inspiration and largeness of Christ's great work at His Father's right hand.
His business and His life are to pray. Our business and our lives ought to be to
pray, and to pray without ceasing.
Failure in
our intercession affects the fruits His intercession. Lazy, heartless, feeble,
and indifferent praying by us mars and hinders the effects of Christ's
praying.
The particular value of private prayer consists in being able
to approach God with more freedom, and unbosom ourselves more fully than in
any other way. Between us and God there are private and personal interests,
sins to confess and wants to be supplied, which it would be improper to
disclose to the world. This duty is enforced by the example of good men in all
ages. -- AMOS
BINNEY
THE
possibilities of prayer are established by the facts and the history of prayer.
Facts are stubborn things. Facts are the true things. Theories may be but
speculations. Opinions may be wholly at fault. But facts must be deferred to.
They cannot be ignored. What are the possibilities of prayer judged by the
facts? What is the history of prayer? What does it reveal to us? Prayer has a
history, written in God's Word and recorded in the experiences and lives of
God's saints. History is truth teaching by example. We may miss the truth by
perverting the history, but the truth is in the facts of history.
"He
spake with Abraham at the
oak,
He
called Elisha from the plough;
David he from
the sheepfolds
took,
Thy
day, thine hour of grace, is
now."
God
reveals the truth by the facts. God reveals Himself by the facts of religious
history. God teaches us His will by the facts and examples of Bible history.
God's facts, God's Word and God's history are all in perfect harmony, and have
much of God in them all. God has ruled the world by prayer; and God still rules
the world by the same divinely ordained
means.
The possibilities of prayer cover not
only individuals but reach to cities and nations. They take in classes and
peoples. The praying of Moses was the one thing which stood between the wrath of
God against the Israelites and His declared purpose to destroy them and the
execution of that Divine purpose, and the Hebrew nation still survived.
Notwithstanding Sodom was not spared, because ten righteous men could not be
found inside its limits, yet the little city of Zoar was spared because Lot
prayed for it as he fled from the storm of fire and brimstone which burned up
Sodom. Nineveh was saved because the king and its people repented of their evil
ways and gave themselves to prayer and
fasting.
Paul in his remarkable prayer in
Ephesians, chapter three, honours the illimitable possibilities of prayer and
glorifies the ability of God to answer prayer. Closing that memorable prayer, so
far-reaching in its petitions, and setting forth the very deepest religious
experience, he declares that "God is able to do exceeding abundantly above all
that we can ask or think." He makes prayer all-inclusive, comprehending all
things, great and small. Where is no time nor place which prayer does not cover
and sanctify. All things in earth and in heaven, everything for time and for
eternity, all are embraced in prayer. Nothing is too great and nothing is too
small to be subject of prayer. Prayer reaches down to the least things of life
and includes the greatest things which concern
us.
"If
pain afflict or wrongs oppress,
If
cares distract, or fears
dismay;
If guilt
deject, or sin
distress,
In
every case still watch and
pray."
One
of the most important, far-reaching, peace-giving, necessary and practical
prayer possibilities we have in Paul's words in Philippians, chapter four,
dealing with prayer as a cure for undue
care:
"Be
careful for nothing; but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with
thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto
God."
"And the peace of God which passeth all
understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ
Jesus."
"Cares"
are the epidemic evil of mankind. They are universal in their reach. They belong
to man in his fallen condition. The predisposition to undue anxiety is the
natural result of sin. Care comes in all shapes, at all times, and from all
sources. It comes to all of every age and station. There are the cares of the
home circle, from which there is no escape save in prayer. There are the cares
of business, the cares of poverty, and the cares of riches. Ours is an anxious
world, and ours is an anxious race. The caution of Paul is well addressed, "In
nothing be anxious." This is the Divine injunction, and that we might be able to
live above anxiety and freed from undue care, "In everything, by prayer and
supplication, let your requests be made known unto God." This is the divinely
prescribed remedy for all anxious cares, for all worry, for all inward
fretting.
The word, "careful," means to be
drawn in different directions, distraction, anxious, disturbed, annoyed in
spirit. Jesus had warned against this very thing in the Sermon on the Mount,
where He had earnestly urged His disciples, "Take no thought for the morrow," in
things concerning the needs of the body. He was endeavouring to show them the
true secret of a quiet mind, freed from anxiety and unnecessary care about food
and raiment. To-morrow's evils were not to be considered. He was simply teaching
the same lesson found in Psalm 37: 3, "Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt
thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed." In cautioning against the
fears of to-morrow's prospective evils, and the material wants of the body, our
Lord was teaching the great lesson of an implicit and childlike confidence in
God. "Commit thy way unto the Lord: trust also in him, and he shall bring it to
pass."
"'Day
by day,' the promise reads,
Daily strength for daily needs
Cast
foreboding fears away;
Take the manna of
to-day."
Paul's
direction is very specific, "Be careful for nothing." Be careful for not one
thing. Be careful for not anything, for any condition, chance or happening. Be
troubled about not anything which creates one disturbing anxiety. Have a mind
freed from all anxieties, all cares, all fretting, and all worries. Cares
divide, distract, bewilder, and destroy unity, forces and quietness of mind.
Cares are fatal to weak piety and are enfeebling to strong piety. What great
need to guard against them and learn the one secret of their cure, even
prayer!
What boundless possibilities there are
in prayer to remedy the situation of mind of which Paul is speaking! Prayer over
everything can quiet every distraction, hush every anxiety, and lift every care
from care-enslaved lives and from care-bewildered hearts. The prayer specific is
the perfect cure for all ills of this character which belong to anxieties, cares
and worries. Only prayer in everything can drive dull care away, relieve of
unnecessary heart burdens, and save from the besetting sin of worrying over
things which we cannot help. Only prayer can bring into the heart and mind the
"peace which passeth all understanding," and keep mind and heart at ease, free
from carking care.
Oh, the needless heart
burdens borne by fretting Christians! How few know the real secret of a happy
Christian life, filled with perfect peace, hid from the storms and billows of a
fretting careworn life! Prayer has a possibility of saving us from
"carefulness," the bane of human lives. Paul in writing to the Corinthians says,
"I would have you without carefulness," and this is the will of God. Prayer has
the ability to do this very thing. "Casting all your care on him, for he careth
for you," is the way Peter puts it, while the Psalmist says, "Fret not thyself
in any wise to do evil." Oh, the blessedness of a heart at ease from all inward
care, exempt from undue anxiety, in the enjoyment of the peace of God which
passeth all understanding!
Paul's injunction
which includes both God's promise and His purpose, and which immediately
precedes his entreaty to be "careful for nothing," reads on this
wise:
"Rejoice
in the Lord always, and again I say,
Rejoice.
"Let your moderation be made known to
all men. The Lord is at
hand."
In a
world filled with cares of every kind, where temptation is the rule, where there
are so many things to try us, how is it possible to rejoice always? We look at
the naked, dry command, and we accept it and reverence it as the Word of God,
but no joy comes. How are we to let our moderation, our mildness, and our
gentleness be universally and always known? We resolve to be benign and gentle.
We remember the nearness of the Lord, but still we are hasty, quick, hard and
salty. We listen to the Divine charge, "Be careful for nothing," yet still we
are anxious, care-worn, care-eaten, and care-tossed. How can we fulfill the
Divine word, so sweet and so large in promise, so beautiful in the eye, and yet
so far from being realized? How can we enter upon the rich patrimony of being
true, honest, just, pure, and possess lovely things? The recipe is infallible,
the remedy is universal, and the cure is unfailing. It is found in the words
which we have so often herein referred to of Paul: "Be careful for nothing, but
in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests
be made known unto God."
This joyous,
care-free, peaceful experience bringing the believer into a joyousness, living
simply by faith day by day, is the will of God. Writing to the Thessalonians,
Paul tells them: "Rejoice evermore; pray without ceasing, and in everything give
thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you." So that not
only is it God's will that we should find full deliverance from all care and
undue anxiety, but He has ordained prayer as the means by which we can reach
that happy state of heart.
The Revised Version
makes some changes in the passage of Paul, about which we have been speaking.
The reading there is" In nothing be anxious," and "the peace of God shall guard
your hearts and your minds." And Paul puts the antecedent in the air of prayer,
which is "Rejoice in the Lord always." That is, be always glad in the Lord, and
be happy with Him. And that you may thus be happy, "Be careful for nothing."
This rejoicing is the doorway for prayer, and its pathway too. The sunshine and
buoyancy of joy in the Lord are the strength and boldness of prayer, the peans
of its victory. "Moderation" makes the rainbow of prayer. The word means
mildness, fairness, gentleness, sweet reasonableness. The Revised Version
changes it to "forbearance," with the margin reading "gentleness." What rare
ingredients and beautiful colourings! These are colourings and ingredients which
make a strong and beautiful character and a wide and positive reputation. A
rejoicing, gentle spirit, positive in reputation, is well fitted for prayer, rid
of the distractions and unrest of care.
The neglect of prayer is a grand hindrance to holiness. "We
have not because we ask not." Oh, how meek and gentle, how lowly in heart, how
full of love both to God and to man, might you have been at this day, if you
had only asked! If you had continued instant in prayer! Ask, that you may
thoroughly experience and perfectly practice the whole of that religion which
our Lord has so beautifully described in the Sermon on the Mount. -- JOHN
WESLEY
IT is to the
closet Paul directs us to go. The unfailing remedy for all carking, distressing
care is prayer. The place where the Lord is at hand is the closet of prayer.
There He is always found, and there He is at hand to bless, to deliver and to
help. The one place where the Lord's presence and power will be more fully
realized than any other place is the closet of prayer.
Paul gives the various terms of prayer,
supplication and giving of thanks as the complement of true praying. The soul
must be in all of these spiritual exercises. There must be no half-hearted
praying, no abridging its nature, and no abating its force, if we would be freed
from this undue anxiety which causes friction and internal distress, and if we
would receive the rich fruit of that peace which passeth all understanding. He
who prays must be an earnest soul, all round in spiritual
attributes.
"In everything, let your requests
be made known unto God," says Paul. Nothing is too great to be handled in
prayer, or to be sought in prayer. Nothing is too small to be weighed in the
secret councils of the closet, and nothing is too little for its final
arbitrament. As care comes from every source, so prayer goes to every source. As
there are no small things in prayer, so there are no small things with God. He
who counts the hairs of our head, and who is not too lofty and high to notice
the little sparrow which falls to the ground, is not too great and high to note
everything which concerns the happiness, the needs and the safety of His
children. Prayer brings God into what men are pleased to term the little affairs
of life. The lives of people are made up of these small matters, and yet how
often do great consequences come from small
beginnings?
"There
is no sorrow, Lord, too
light
To
bring in prayer to Thee;
There is no
anxious care too
slight
To
wake Thy
sympathy.
"There
is no secret sigh we
breathe,
But
meets Thine ear Divine,
And every cross
grows light
beneath
The
shadow, Lord, of
Thine."
As
everything by prayer is to be brought to the notice of Almighty God, so we are
assured that whatever affects us concerns Him. How comprehensive is this
direction about prayer! "In everything by prayer." There is no distinction here
between temporal and spiritual things. Such a distinction is against faith,
wisdom and reverence. God rules everything in nature and in grace. Man is
affected for time and eternity by things secular as well as by things spiritual.
Man's salvation hangs on his business as well as on his prayers. A man's
business hangs on his prayers just as it hangs on his
diligence.
The chief hindrances to piety, the
wiliest and the deadliest temptations of the devil, are in business, and lie
alongside the things of time. The heaviest, the most confusing and the most
stupefying cares lie beside secular and worldly matters. So in everything which
comes to us and which concerns us, in everything which we want to come to us,
and in everything which we do not want to come to us, prayer is to be made for
all. Prayer blesses all things, brings all things, relieves all things and
prevents all things. Everything as well as every place and every hour is to be
ordered by prayer. Prayer has in it the possibility to affect everything which
affects us. Here are the vast possibilities of
prayer.
How much is the bitter of life
sweetened by prayer! How are the feeble made strong by prayer! Sickness flees
before the health of prayer. Doubts, misgivings, and trembling fears retire
before prayer. Wisdom, knowledge, holiness and heaven are at the command of
prayer. Nothing is outside of prayer. It has the power to gain all things in the
provision of our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul covers all departments and sweeps the
entire field of human concernment, conditions, and happenings by saying, "In
everything by prayer."
Supplications and
thanksgiving are to be joined with prayer. It is not the dignity of worship, the
gorgeousness of ceremonials, the magnificence of its ritual, nor the plainness
of its sacraments, which avail. It is not simply the soul's hallowed and lowly
abasement before God, neither the speechless awe, which benefits in this prayer
service, but the intensity of supplication, the looking and the lifting of the
soul in ardent plea to God for the things desired and for which request is
made.
The radiance and gratitude and utterance
of thanksgiving must be there. This is not simply the poetry of praise, but the
deep-toned words and the prose of thanks. There must be hearty thanks, which
remembers the past, sees God in it, and voices that recognition in sincere
thanksgiving. The hidden depths within must have utterance. The lips must speak
the music of the soul. A heart enthused of God, a heart illumined by His
presence, a life guided by His right hand, must have something to say for God in
gratitude. Such is to recognize God in the events of past life, to exalt God for
His goodness, and to honour God who has honoured
it.
"Make known your requests unto God." The
"requests" must be made known unto God. Silence is not prayer. Prayer is asking
God for something which we have not, which we desire, and which He has promised
to give in answer to prayer. Prayer is really verbal asking. Words are in
prayer. Strong words and true words are found in prayer. Desires in prayer are
put in words. The praying one is a pleader. He urges his prayer by arguments,
promises, and needs.
Sometimes loud words are
in prayer. The Psalmist said, "Evening, morning and at noon will I pray, and cry
aloud." The praying one wants something which he has not got. He wants something
which God has in His possession, and which he can get by praying. He is
beggared, bewildered, oppressed and confused. He is before God in supplication,
in prayer, and in thanksgiving. These are the attitudes, the incense, the
paraphernalia, and the fashion of this hour, the court attendance of his soul
before God.
"Requests" mean to ask for one's
self. The man is in a strait. He needs something, and he needs it badly. Other
help has failed. It means a plea for something to be given which has not been
done. The request is for the Giver, -- not alone His gifts but Himself. The
requests of the praying one are to be made known unto God. The requests are to
be brought to the knowledge of God. It is then that cares fly away, anxieties
disappear, worries depart, and the soul gets at ease. Then it is there steals
into the heart "the peace of God that passeth all
understanding."
"Peace!
doubting heart, my God's I
am,
Who
formed me man, forbids my fear;
The Lord hath
called me by my
name;
The
Lord protects, forever near;
His blood for me
did once atone,
And still He loves and guards His
own."
In
James, chapter five, we have another marvellous description of prayer and its
possibilities. It has to do with sickness and health, sin and forgiveness, and
rain and drouth. Here we have James' directory for
praying:
"Is
any among you afflicted? Let him pray. Is any merry? Let him sing
psalms.
"Is any sick among you? Let him call
for the elders of the Church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil
in the name of the Lord.
"And the prayer of
faith shall save the sick; and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have
committed sins, they shall be forgiven
him.
"Confess your faults one to another, and
pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual, fervent prayer of a
righteous man availeth much.
"Elias was a man
subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not
rain, and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six
months.
"And he prayed again, and the heaven
gave rain, and the earth brought forth her
fruit."
Here
is prayer for one's own needs and intercessory prayer for others; prayer for
physical needs and prayer for spiritual needs; prayer for drouth and prayer for
rain; prayer for temporal matters and prayer for spiritual things. How vast the
reach of prayer! How wonderful under these words its
possibilities!
Here is the remedy for
affliction and depression of every sort, and here we find the remedy for
sickness and for rain in the time of drouth. Here is the way to obtain
forgiveness of sins. A stroke of prayer paralyzes the energies of nature, stays
its clouds, rain and dew, and blasts field and farm like the simoon. Prayer
brings clouds, and rain and fertility to the famished and wasted
earth.
The general statement, "The effectual,
fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much," is a statement of prayer as an
energetic force. Two words are used. One signifies power in exercise, operative
power, while the other is power as an endowment. Prayer is power and strength, a
power and strength which influences God, and is most salutary, widespread and
marvellous in its gracious benefits to man. Prayer influences God. The ability
of God to do for man is the measure of the possibility of
prayer.
"Thou
art coming to a king,
Large petitions with thee bring;
For His grace and
power are such
None can ever ask too much."
In his "Soldier's Pocket Book," Lord Wolseley says if a young
officer wishes to get on, he must volunteer for the most hazardous duties and
take every possible chance of risking his life. It was a spirit and courage
like that which was shown in the service of God by a good soldier of Jesus
Christ named John McKenzie who died a few years ago. One evening when he was a
lad and eager for work in the Foreign Mission field he knelt down at the foot
of a tree in the Ladies' Walk on the banks of the Lossie at Elgin and offered
up this prayer: "O Lord send me to the darkest spot on earth." And God heard
him and sent him to South Africa where he laboured many years first under the
London Missionary Society and then under the British Government as the first
Resident Commissioner among the natives of Bechuanaland. -- J.O.
STRUTHERS
IT is answered
prayer which brings praying out of the realm of dry, dead things, and makes
praying a thing of life and power. It is the answer to prayer which brings
things to pass, changes the natural trend of things, and orders all things
according to the will of God. It is the answer to prayer which takes praying out
of the regions of fanaticism, and saves it from being Eutopian, or from being
merely fanciful. It is the answer to prayer which makes praying a power for God
and for man, and makes praying real and divine. Unanswered prayers are training
schools for unbelief, an imposition and a nuisance, an impertinence to God and
to man.
Answers to prayer are the only surety
that we have prayed aright. What marvellous power there is in prayer! What
untold miracles it works in this world! What untold benefits to men does it
secure to those who pray! Why is it that the average prayer by the million goes
a begging for an answer?
The millions of
unanswered prayers are not to be solved by the mystery of God's will. We are not
the sport of His sovereign power. He is not playing at "make-believe" in His
marvellous promises to answer prayer. The whole explanation is found in our
wrong praying. "We ask and receive not because we ask amiss." If all unanswered
prayers were dumped into the ocean, they would come very near filling it. Child
of God, can you pray? Are your prayers answered? If not, why not? Answered
prayer is the proof of your real praying.
The
efficacy of prayer from a Bible standpoint lies solely in the answer to prayer.
The benefit of prayer has been well and popularly maximized by the saying, "It
moves the arm which moves the universe." To get unquestioned answers to prayer
is not only important as to the satisfying of our desires, but is the evidence
of our abiding in Christ. It becomes more important still. The mere act of
praying is no test of our relation to God. The act of praying may be a real dead
performance. It may be the routine of habit. But to pray and receive clear
answers, not once or twice, but daily, this is the sure test, and is the
gracious point of our vital connection with Jesus
Christ.
Read our Lord's words in this
connection:
"If
ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it
shall be done unto
you."
To God
and to man, the answer to prayer is the all-important part of our praying. The
answer to prayer, direct and unmistakable, is the evidence of God's being. It
proves that God lives, that there is a God, an intelligent being, who is
interested in His creatures, and who listens to them when they approach Him in
prayer. There is no proof so clear and demonstrative that God exists than prayer
and its answer. This was Elijah's plea: "Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this
people may know that thou art the Lord
God."
The answer to prayer is the part of
prayer which glorifies God. Unanswered prayers are dumb oracles which leave the
praying ones in darkness, doubt and bewilderment, and which carry no conviction
to the unbeliever. It is not the act or the attitude of praying which gives
efficacy to prayer. It is not abject prostration of the body before God, the
vehement or quiet utterance to God, the exquisite beauty and poetry of the
diction of our prayers, which do the deed. It is not the marvellous array of
argument and eloquence in praying which makes prayer effectual. Not one or all
of these are the things which glorify God. It is the answer which brings glory
to His Name.
Elijah might have prayed on
Carmel's heights till this good day with all the fire and energy of his soul,
and if no answer had been given, no glory would have come to God. Peter might
have shut himself up with Dorcas' dead body till he himself died on his knees,
and if no answer had come, no glory to God nor good to man would have followed,
but only doubt, blight and dismay.
Answer to
prayer is the convincing proof of our right relations to God. Jesus said at the
grave of
Lazarus:
"Father,
I thank thee that thou hast heard me.
"And I
knew that thou hearest me always, but because of the people that stand by I said
it, that they may believe that thou hast sent
me."
The
answer of His prayer was the proof of His mission from God, as the answer to
Elijah's prayer was made to the woman whose son he raised to life. She said,
"Now by this I know that thou art a man of God." He is highest in the favour of
God who has the readiest access and the greatest number of answers to prayer
from Almighty
God.
Prayer
ascends to God by an invariable law, even by more than law, by the will, the
promise and the presence of a personal God. The answer comes back to earth by
all the promise, the truth, the power and the love of
God.
Not to be concerned about the answer to
prayer is not to pray. What a world of waste there is in praying. What myriads
of prayers have been offered for which no answer is returned, no answer longed
for, and no answer is expected! We have been nurturing a false faith and hiding
the shame of our loss and inability to pray, by the false, comforting plea that
God does not answer directly or objectively, but indirectly and subjectively. We
have persuaded ourselves that by some kind of hocus pocus of which we are wholly
unconscious in its process and its results, we have been made better. Conscious
that God has not answered us directly, we have solaced ourselves with the
delusive unction that God has in some impalpable way, and with unknown results,
given us something better. Or we have comforted and nurtured our spiritual sloth
by saying that it is not God's will to give it to us. Faith teaches God's
praying ones that it is God's will to answer prayer. God answers all prayers and
every prayer of His true children who truly
pray.
"Prayer
makes the darkened cloud withdraw,
Prayer climbs the ladder Jacob saw;
Gives exercise to faith and love,
Brings every blessing from
above."
The
emphasis in the Scriptures is always given to the answer to prayer. All things
from God are given in answer to prayer. God Himself, His presence, His gifts and
His grace, one and all, are secured by prayer. The medium by which God
communicates with men is prayer. The most real thing in prayer, its very
essential end, is the answer it secures. The mere repetition of words in prayer,
the counting of beads, the multiplying mere words of prayer, as works of
supererogation, as if there was virtue in the number of prayers to avail, is a
vain delusion, an empty thing, a useless service. Prayer looks directly to
securing an answer. This is its design. It has no other end in
view.
Communion with God of course is in
prayer. There is sweet fellowship there with our God through His Holy Spirit.
Enjoyment of God there is in praying, sweet, rich and strong. The graces of the
Spirit in the inner soul are nurtured by prayer, kept alive and promoted in
their growth by this spiritual exercise. But not one nor all of these benefits
of prayer have in them the essential end of prayer. The divinely appointed
channel through which all good and all grace flows to our souls and bodies is
prayer.
"Prayer
is appointed to convey
The blessings God designs to
give."
Prayer
is divinely ordained as the means by which all temporal and spiritual good are
gained to us. Prayer is not an end in itself. It is not something done to be
rested in, something we have done, about which we are to congratulate ourselves.
It is a means to an end. It is something we do which brings us something in
return, without which the praying is valueless. Prayer always aims at securing
an answer.
We are rich and strong, good and
holy, beneficent and benignant, by answered prayer. It is not the mere
performance, the attitude, nor the words of prayer, which bring benefit to us,
but it is the answer sent direct from heaven. Conscious, real answers to prayer
bring real good to us. This is not praying merely for self, or simply for
selfish ends. The selfish character cannot exist when the prayer conditions are
fulfilled.
It is by these answered prayers that
human nature is enriched. The answered prayer brings us into constant and
conscious communion with God, awakens and enlarges gratitude, and excites the
melody and lofty inspiration of praise. Answered prayer is the mark of God in
our praying. It is the exchange with heaven, and it establishes and realizes a
relationship with the unseen. We give our prayers in exchange for the Divine
blessing. God accepts our prayers through the atoning blood and gives Himself,
His presence and His grace in return.
All holy
affections are affected by answered prayers. By the answers to prayer all holy
principles are matured, and faith, love and hope have their enrichment by
answered prayer. The answer is found in all true praying. The answer is in
prayer strongly as an aim, a desire expressed, and its expectation and
realization give importunity and realization to prayer. It is the fact of the
answer which makes the prayer, and which enters into its very being. To seek no
answer to prayer takes the desire, the aim, and the heart out of prayer. It
makes praying a dead, stockish thing, fit only for dumb idols. It is the answer
which brings praying into Bible regions, and makes it a desire realized, a
pursuit, an interest, that clothes it with flesh and blood, and makes it a
prayer, throbbing with all the true life of prayer, affluent with all the
paternal relations of giving and receiving, of asking and
answering.
God holds all good in His own hands.
That good comes to us through our Lord Jesus Christ because of His all atoning
merits, by asking it in His name. The only and the sole command in which all the
others of its class belong, is "Ask, seek, knock." And the one and sole promise
is its counterpart, its necessary equivalent and results: "It shall be given --
ye shall find -- it shall be opened unto
you."
God is so much involved in prayer and its
hearing and answering, that all of His attributes and His whole being are
centered in that great fact. It distinguishes Him as peculiarly beneficent,
wonderfully good, and powerfully attractive in His nature. "O thou that hearest
prayer! To thee shall all flesh
come."
"Faithful,
O Lord, Thy mercies
are
A
rock that cannot
move;
A thousand
promises declare
Thy
constancy of
love."
Not
only does the Word of God stand surety for the answer to prayer, but all the
attributes of God conspire to the same end. God's veracity is at stake in the
engagements to answer prayer. His wisdom, His truthfulness and His goodness are
involved. God's infinite and inflexible rectitude is pledged to the great end of
answering the prayers of those who call upon Him in time of need. Justice and
mercy blend into oneness to secure the answer to prayer. It is significant that
the very justice of God comes into play and stands hard by God's faithfulness in
the strong promise God makes of the pardon of sins and of cleansing from sin's
pollutions:
"If
we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to
cleanse us from all
unrighteousness."
God's
kingly relation to man, with all of its authority, unites with the fatherly
relation and with all of its tenderness to secure the answer to
prayer.
Our Lord Jesus Christ is most fully
committed to the answer of prayer. "Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that
will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son." How well assured the
answer to prayer is, when that answer is to glorify God the Father! And how
eager Jesus Christ is to glorify His Father in heaven! So eager is He to answer
prayer which always and everywhere brings glory to the Father, that no prayer
offered in His name is denied or overlooked by Him. Says our Lord Jesus Christ
again, giving fresh assurance to our faith, "If ye shall ask anything in my
name, I will do it." So says He once more, "Ask what ye will, and it shall be
done unto
you."
"Come,
my soul, thy suit prepare,
Jesus loves to answer prayer;
He Himself has
bid thee pray,
Therefore will not say thee nay."
Constrained at the darkest hour to confess humbly that without
God's help I was helpless, I vowed a vow in the forest solitude that I would
confess His aid before men. A silence as a death was around me; it was
midnight, I was weakened by illness, prostrated with fatigue and worn with
anxiety for my white and black companions, whose fate was a mystery. In this
physical and mental distress I besought God to give me back my people. Nine
hours later we were exulting with rapturous joy. In full view of all was the
crimson flag with the crescent and beneath its waving folds was the long-lost
rear column. -- HENRY M. STANLEY
GOD has committed
Himself to us by His Word in our praying. The Word of God is the basis and the
inspiration and the heart of prayer. Jesus Christ stands as the illustration of
God's Word, its illimitable good in promise as well as in realization. God takes
nothing by halves. He gives nothing by halves. We can have the whole of Him when
He has the whole of us. His words of promise are so far-reaching, and so
all-comprehending, that they seem to have deadened our comprehension and have
paralyzed our praying. This appears when we consider those large words, when He
almost exhausts human language in promises, as in "whatever," "anything," and in
the all-inclusive "whatsoever," and "all things." These oft-repeated promises,
so very great, seem to daze us, and instead of allowing them to move us to
asking, testing, and receiving, we turn away full of wonder, but empty handed
and with empty hearts.
We quote another
passage from our Lord's teaching about prayer. By the most solemn verification,
He declares as
follows:
"And
in that day ye shall ask me nothing; Verily, Verily, I say unto you: Whatsoever
ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it to
you.
"Hitherto ye have asked nothing in my
name. Ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be
full."
Twice
in this passage He declares the answer, and pledging His Father, "He will give
it to you," and declaring with impressive and most suggestive iteration, "Ask,
and ye shall receive." So strong and so often did Jesus declare and repeat the
answer as an inducement to pray, and as an inevitable result of prayer, the
Apostles held it as so fully and invincibly established, that prayer would be
answered, they held it to be their main duty to urge and command men to pray. So
firmly were they established as to the truth of the law of prayer as laid down
by our Lord, that they were led to affirm that the answer to prayer was involved
in and necessarily bound up with all right praying. God the Father and Jesus
Christ, His Son, are both strongly committed by all the truth of their word and
by the fidelity of their character, to answer
prayer.
Not only do these and all the promises
pledge Almighty God to answer prayer, but they assure us that the answer will be
specific, and that the very thing for which we pray will be
given.
Our Lord's invariable teaching was that
we receive that for which we ask, and obtain that for which we seek, and have
that door opened at which we knock. This is according to our Heavenly Father's
direction to us, and His giving to us for our asking. He will not disappoint us
by not answering, neither will He deny us by giving us some other thing for
which we have not asked, or by letting us find some other thing for which we
have not sought, or by opening to us the wrong door, at which we were not
knocking. If we ask bread, He will give us bread. If we ask an egg, He will give
us an egg. If we ask a fish, He will give us a fish. Not something like bread,
but bread itself will be given unto us. Not something like a fish, but a fish
will be given. Not evil will be given us in answer to prayer, but
good.
Earthly parents, though evil in nature,
give for the asking, and answer to the crying of their children. The
encouragement to prayer is transferred from our earthly father to our Heavenly
Father, from the evil to the good, to the supremely good; from the weak to the
omnipotent, our Heavenly Father, centering in Himself all the highest
conceptions of Fatherhood, abler, readier, and much more than the best, and much
more than the ablest earthly father. "How much more," who can tell? Much more
than our earthly father, will He supply all our needs, give us all good things,
and enable us to meet every difficult duty and fulfill every law, though hard to
flesh and blood, but made easy under the full supply of our Father's beneficent
and exhaustless help.
Here we have in symbol
and as initial, more than an intimation of the necessity, not only of
perseverance in prayer, but of the progressive stages of intentness and effort
in the outlay of increasing spiritual force. Asking, seeking, and knocking. Here
is an ascending scale from the mere words of asking, to a settled attitude of
seeking, resulting in a determined, clamorous and vigorous direct effort of
praying.
Just as God has commanded us to pray
always, to pray everywhere, and to pray in everything, so He will answer always,
everywhere and in everything.
God has plainly
and with directness committed Himself to answer prayer. If we fulfill the
conditions of prayer, the answer is bound to come. The laws of nature are not so
invariable and so inexorable as the promised answer to pray. The ordinances of
nature might fail, but the ordinances of grace can never fail. There are no
limitations, no adverse conditions, no weakness, no inability, which can or will
hinder the answer to prayer. God's doing for us when we pray has no limitations,
is not hedged about, by provisos in Himself, or in the peculiar circumstances of
any particular case. If we really pray, God masters and defies all things and is
above all conditions.
God explicitly says,
"Call unto me, and I will answer." There are no limitations, no hedges, no
hindrances in the way of God fulfilling the promise. His word is at stake. His
word is involved. God solemnly engages to answer prayer. Man is to look for the
answer, be inspired by the expectation of the answer, and may with humble
boldness demand the answer. God, who cannot lie, is bound to answer. He has
voluntarily placed Himself under obligation to answer the prayer of him who
truly
prays.
"To
God your every
want
In
instant prayer display;
Pray always;
pray, and never
faint;
Pray,
without ceasing,
pray.
"In
fellowship,
alone,
To
God with faith draw near;
Approach His
courts, beseech His
throne,
With
all the power of
prayer."
The
prophets and the men of God of Old Testament times were unshaken in their faith
in the absolute certainty of God fulfilling His promises to them. They rested in
security on the word of God, and had no doubt whatever either as to the fidelity
of God in answering prayer or of His willingness or ability. So that their
history is marked by repeated asking and receiving at the hands of
God,
The same is true of the early Church. They
received without question the doctrine their Lord and Master had so often
affirmed that the answer to prayer was sure. The certainty of the answer to
prayer was as fixed as God's Word was true. The Holy Ghost dispensation was
ushered in by the disciples carrying this faith into practice. When Jesus told
them to "Tarry at Jerusalem till they were endued with power from on high," they
received it as a sure promise that if they obeyed the command, they would
certainly receive the Divine power. So in prayer for ten days they tarried in
the upper room, and the promise was fulfilled. The answer came just as Jesus
said.
So when Peter and John were arrested for
healing the man who sat at the beautiful gate of the temple, after being
threatened by the rulers in Jerusalem, they were released. "And being let go,
they went to their own company," they went to those with whom they were in
affinity, those of like minds, and not to men of the world. Still believing in
prayer and its efficacy, they gave themselves to prayer, the prayer itself being
recorded in Acts, chapter four. They recited some things to the Lord, and "when
they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together, and
they were filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with
boldness."
Here they were refilled for this
special occasion with the Holy Ghost. The answer to prayer responded to their
faith and prayer. The fullness of the Spirit always brings boldness. The cure
for fear in the face of threatenings of the enemies of the Lord is being filled
with the Spirit. This gives power to speak the word of the Lord with boldness.
This gives courage and drives away fear.
A young man had been called to the foreign field. He had not
been in the habit of preaching, but he knew one thing, how to prevail with
God; and going one day to a friend he said: "I don't see how God can use me on
the field. I have no special talent." His friend said: "My brother, God wants
men on the field who can pray. There are too many preachers now and too few
pray-ers." He went. In his own room in the early dawn a voice was heard
weeping and pleading for souls. All through the day, the shut door and the
hush that prevailed made you feel like walking softly, for a soul was
wrestling with God. Yet to this home, hungry souls would flock,
drawn by some irresistible power. Ah, the mystery was unlocked. In the secret
chamber lost souls were pleaded for and claimed. The Holy Ghost knew just
where they were and sent them along. -- J. HUDSON
TAYLOR
WE put it to the front.
We unfold it on a banner never to be lowered or folded, that God does hear and
answer prayer. God has always heard and answered prayer. God will forever hear
and answer prayer. He is the same yesterday, to-day and forever, ever blessed,
ever to be adored. Amen. He changes not. As He has always answered prayer, so
will He ever continue to do so.
To answer
prayer is God's universal rule. It is His unchangeable and irrepealable law to
answer prayer. It is His invariable, specific and inviolate promise to answer
prayer. The few denials to prayer in the Scriptures are the exceptions to the
general rule, suggestive and startling by their fewness, exception and
emphasis.
The possibilities of prayer, then,
lie in the great truth, illimitable in its broadness, fathomless in its depths,
exhaustless in its fullness, that God answers every prayer from every true soul
who truly prays.
God's Word does not say, "Call
unto me, and you will thereby be trained into the happy art of knowing how to be
denied. Ask, and you will learn sweet patience by getting nothing." Far from it.
But it is definite, clear and positive: "Ask, and it shall be given unto
you."
We have this case among many in the Old
Testament:
"Jabez
called on the God of Israel, saying, O that thou wouldst bless me indeed, and
enlarge my coast, and that thy hand might be with me, and that thou wouldst keep
me from evil, that it may not grieve
me."
And God
readily granted him the things which he had
requested.
Hannah, distressed in soul because
she was childless, and desiring a man child, repaired to the house of prayer,
and prayed, and this is the record she makes of the direct answer she received:
"For this child I prayed, and the Lord hath given me the petition which I asked
of him."
God's promises and purposes go direct
to the fact of giving for the asking. The answer to our prayers is the motive
constantly presented in the Scriptures to encourage us to pray and to quicken us
in this spiritual exercise. Take such strong, clear passages as
these:
"Call
unto me, and I will answer thee."
"He shall
call unto me, and I will answer."
"Ask; and it
shall be given you. Seek, and ye shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened unto
you."
This is
Jesus Christ's law of prayer. He does not say, "Ask, and something shall be
given you." Nor does He say, "Ask, and you will be trained into piety." But it
is that when you ask, the very thing asked for will be given. Jesus does not
say, "Knock, and some door will be opened." But the very door at which you are
knocking will be opened. To make this doubly sure, Jesus Christ duplicates and
reiterates the promise of the answer: "For every one that asketh, receiveth; and
he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh, it shall be
opened."
Answered prayer is the spring of love,
and is the direct encouragement to pray. "I love the Lord because he hath heard
my voice and my supplications. Because he hath inclined his ear unto me,
therefore will I call upon him as long as I
live."
The certainty of the Father's giving is
assured by the Father's relation, and by the ability and goodness of the Father.
Earthly parents, frail, infirm, and limited in goodness and ability, give when
the child asks and seeks. The parental heart responds most readily to the cry
for bread. The hunger of the child touches and wins the father's heart. So God,
our Heavenly Father, is as easily and strongly moved by our prayers as the
earthly parent. "If ye being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your
children, how much more shall your father in heaven give good gifts unto them
that ask him?" "Much more," just as much more does God's goodness, tenderness
and ability exceed that of man's.
Just as the
asking is specific, so also is the answer specific. The child does not ask for
one thing and get another. He does not cry for bread, and get a stone. He does
not ask for an egg, and receive a scorpion. He does not ask for a fish, and get
a serpent. Christ demands specific asking. He responds to specific praying by
specific giving.
To give the very thing prayed
for, and not something else, is fundamental to Christ's law of praying. No
prayer for the cure of blind eyes did He ever answer by curing deaf ears. The
very thing prayed for is the very thing which He gives. The exceptions to this
are confirmatory of this great law of prayer. He who asks for bread gets bread,
and not a stone. If he asks for a fish, he receives a fish, and not a serpent.
No cry is so pleading and so powerful as the child's cry for bread. The cravings
of hunger, the appetite felt, and the need realized, all create and propel the
crying of the child. Our prayers must be as earnest, as needy, and as hungry as
the hungry child's cry for bread. Simple, artless and direct and specific must
be our praying, according to Christ's law of prayer and His teaching of God's
Fatherhood.
The illustration and enforcement of
the law of prayer are found in the specific answers given to prayer. Gethsemane
is the only seeming exception. The prayer of Jesus Christ in that awful hour of
darkness and hell was conditioned on these words, "If it be possible, let this
cup pass from me." But beyond these utterances of our Lord was the soul and life
prayer of the willing, suffering Divine victim, "Nevertheless not as I will, but
as thou wilt." The prayer was answered, the angel came, strength was imparted,
and the meek sufferer in silence drank the bitter
cup.
Two cases of unanswered prayer are
recorded in the Scriptures in addition to the Gethsemane prayer of our Lord. The
first was that of David for the life of his baby child, but for good reasons to
Almighty God the request was not granted. The second was that of Paul for the
removal of the thorn in the flesh, which was denied. But we are constrained to
believe these must have been notable as exceptions to God's rule, as illustrated
in the history of prophet, priest, apostle and saint, as recorded in the Divine
Word. There must have been unrevealed reasons which moved God to veer from His
settled and fixed rule to answer prayer by giving the specific thing prayed
for.
Our Lord did not hold the Syrophenician
woman in the school of unanswered prayer in order to test and mature her faith,
neither did He answer her prayer by healing or saving her husband. She asks for
the healing of her daughter, and Christ healed the daughter. She received the
very thing for which she asked the Lord Jesus Christ. It was in the school of
answered prayer our Lord disciplined and perfected her faith, and it was by
giving her a specific answer to her prayer. Her prayer centered on her daughter.
She prayed for the one thing, the healing of her child. And the answer of our
Lord centered likewise on the daughter.
We
tread altogether too gingerly upon the great and precious promises of God, and
too often we ignore them wholly. The promise is the ground on which faith stands
in asking of God. This is the one basis of prayer. We limit God's ability. We
measure God's ability and willingness to answer by prayer by the standard of
men. We limit the Holy One of Israel. How full of benefaction and remedy to
suffering mankind are the promises as given us by James in his Epistle, fifth
chapter! How personal and mediate do they make God in prayer! They are a direct
challenge to our faith. They are encouraging to large expectations in all the
requests we make of God. Prayer affects God in a direct manner, and has its aim
and end in affecting Him. Prayer takes hold of God, and induces Him to do large
things for us, whether personal or relative, temporal or spiritual, earthly or
heavenly.
The great gap between Bible promises
to prayer and the income from praying is almost unspeakably great, so much so
that it is a prolific source of infidelity. It breeds unbelief in prayer as a
great moral force, and begets doubt really as to the efficacy of prayer.
Christianity needs to-day, above all things else, men and women who can in
prayer put God to the test and who can prove His promises. When this happy day
for the world begins, it will be earth's brightest day, and will be heaven's
dawning day on earth. These are the sort of men and women needed in this modern
day in the Church. It is not educated men who are needed for the times. It is
not more money that is required. It is not more machinery, more organization,
more ecclesiastical laws, but it is men and women who know how to pray, who can
in prayer lay hold upon God and bring Him down to earth, and move Him to take
hold of earth's affairs mightily and put life and power into the Church and into
all of its machinery.
The Church and the world
greatly need saints who can bridge this wide gap between the praying done and
the small number of answers received. Saints are needed whose faith is bold
enough and sufficiently far-reaching to put God to the test. The cry comes even
now out of heaven to the people of the present-day Church, as it sounded forth
in the days of Malachi: "Prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts." God is
waiting to be put to the test by His people in prayer. He delights in being put
to the test on His promises. It is His highest pleasure to answer prayer, to
prove the reliability of His promises. Nothing worthy of God nor of great value
to men will be accomplished till this is
done.
Our Gospel belongs to the miraculous. It
was projected on the miraculous plane. It cannot be maintained but by the
supernatural. Take the supernatural out of our holy religion, and its life and
power are gone, and it degenerates into a mere mode of morals. The miraculous is
Divine power. Prayer has in it this same power. Prayer brings this Divine power
into the ranks of men and puts it to work. Prayer brings into the affairs of
earth a supernatural element. Our Gospel when truly presented is the power of
God. Never was the Church more in need of those who can and will test Almighty
God. Never did the Church need more than now those who can raise up everywhere
memorials of God's supernatural power, memorials of answers to prayer, memorials
of promises fulfilled. These would do more to silence the enemy of souls, the
foe of God and the adversary of the Church than any modern scheme or present-day
plan for the success of the Gospel. Such memorials reared by praying people
would dumbfound God's foes, strengthen weak saints, and would fill strong saints
with triumphant rapture.
The most prolific
source of infidelity, and that which traduces and hinders praying, and that
which obscures the being and glory of God most effectually, is unanswered
prayer. Better not to pray at all than to go through a dead form, which secures
no answer, brings no glory to God, and supplies no good to man. Nothing so
indurates the heart and nothing so blinds us to the unseen and the eternal, as
this kind of prayerless praying.
George Benfield, a driver on the Midland Railway, living at
Derby, was standing on the footplate oiling his engine, the train being
stationary, when his foot slipped; he fell on the space between the lines. He
heard the express coming on, and had only time enough to lie full length on
the "six-foot" when it rushed by, and he escaped unhurt. He returned to his
home in the middle of the night and as he was going up-stairs he heard one of
his children, a girl about eight years old, crying and sobbing. "Oh, father,"
she said, "I thought somebody came and told me that you were going to be
killed, and I got out of bed and prayed that God would not let you die." Was
it only a dream, a coincidence? George Benfield and others believed that he
owed his life to that prayer. -- DEAN
HOLE
THE earthly career
of our Lord Jesus Christ was no mere episode, a sort of interlude, in His
eternal life. What He was and what He did on earth was neither abnormal nor
divergent, but characteristic. What He was and what He did on earth is but the
figure and the illustration of what He is and what He is doing in heaven. He is
"the same yesterday and to-day, and forever." This statement is the Divine
summary of the eternal unity and changelessness of His character. His earthly
life was made up largely of hearing and answering prayer. His heavenly life is
devoted to the same Divine business. Really the Old Testament is the record of
God hearing and answering prayer. The whole Bible deals largely with this all
important subject.
Christ's miracles are
object lessons. They are living pictures. They talk to us. They have hands which
take hold of us. Many valuable lessons do these miracles teach us. In their
diversity, they refresh us. They show us the matchless power of Jesus Christ,
and at the same time discover to us His marvellous compassion for suffering
humanity. These miracles disclose to us His ability to endlessly diversify His
operations. God's method in working with man is not the same in all cases. He
does not administer His grace in rigid ruts. There is endless variety in His
movements. There is marvellous diversity in His operations. He does not fashion
His creations in the same mould. Just so our Lord is not circumscribed in His
working nor trammelled by models. He works independently. He is His own
architect. He furnishes His own patterns which have unlimited
variety.
When we consider our Lord's miracles,
we discover that quite a number were performed unconditionally. At least there
were no conditions accompanying them so far as the Divine record shows. At His
own instance, without being solicited to do so, in order to glorify God and to
manifest His own glory and power, this class of miracles was wrought. Many of
His mighty works were performed at the moving of His compassion and at the call
of suffering and need, as well as at the call of His power. But a number of them
were performed by Him in answer to prayer. Some were wrought in answer to the
personal prayers of those who were afflicted. Others were performed in answer to
the prayers of the friends of those who were afflicted. Those miracles wrought
in answer to prayer are very instructive in the uses of
prayer.
In these conditional miracles, faith
holds the primacy and prayer is faith's vicegerent. We have an illustration of
the importance of faith as the condition on which the exercise of Christ's power
was based, or the channel through which it flowed, in the incident of a visit He
made to Nazareth with its results, or rather its lack of results. Here is the
record of the
case:
"And he
could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk,
and healed them.
"And he marvelled because of
their
unbelief."
Those
people at Nazareth may have prayed our Lord to raise their dead, or open the
eyes of the blind, or heal the lepers, but it was all in vain. The absence of
faith, however much of performance may be seen, restrains the exercise of God's
power, paralyzes the arm of Christ, and turns to death all signs of life.
Unbelief is the one thing which seriously hinders Almighty God in doing mighty
works. Matthew's record of this visit to Nazareth says, "And he did not any
mighty works there because of their unbelief." Lack of faith ties the hands of
Almighty God in His working among the children of men. Prayer to Christ must
always be based, backed and impregnated with
faith.
The miracle of miracles in the earthly
career of our Lord, the raising of Lazarus from the dead, was remarkable for its
prayer accompaniment. It was really a prayer issue, something after the issue
between the prophets of Baal and Elijah. It was not a prayer for help. It was
one of thanksgiving and assured confidence. Let us read
it:
"And
Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard
me.
"And I know that thou hearest me always.
But because of the people that stand by, I said it, that they may believe that
thou hast sent
me."
It was a
prayer mainly for the benefit of those who were present, that they might know
that God was with Him because He had answered His prayers, and that faith in God
might be radiated in their hearts.
Answered
prayers are sometimes the most convincing and faith-creating forces. Unanswered
prayers chill the atmosphere and freeze the soil of faith. If Christians knew
how to pray so as to have answers to their prayers, evident, immediate, and
demonstrative answers from God, faith would be more widely diffused, would
become more general, would be more profound, and would be a much more mighty
force in the world.
What a valuable lesson of
faith and intercessory prayer does the miracle of the healing of the centurion's
servant bring to us! The simplicity and strength of the faith of this Roman
officer are remarkable, for He believed that it was not needful for our Lord to
go directly to his house in order to have his request granted, "But speak the
word only, and my servant shall be healed." And our Lord puts His mark upon this
man's faith by saying, "Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith,
no, not in Israel." This man's prayer was the expression of his strong faith,
and such faith brought the answer promptly.
The
same invaluable lesson we get from the prayer miracle of the case of the
Syrophenician woman who went to our Lord in behalf of her stricken daughter,
making her daughter's case her own, by pleading, "Lord, help me." Here was
importunity, holding on, pressing her case, refusing to let go or to be denied.
A strong case it was of intercessory prayer and its benefits. Our Lord seemingly
held her off for a while but at last yielded, and put His seal upon her strong
faith: "O woman, great is thy faith! Be it unto thee even as thou wilt." What a
lesson on praying for others and its large
benefits!
Individual cases could be named,
where the afflicted persons interceded for themselves, illustrations of
wonderful things wrought by our Lord in answer to the cries of those who were
afflicted. As we read the Evangelists' record, the pages fairly glisten with
records of our Lord's miracles wrought in answer to prayer, showing the
wonderful things accomplished by the use of this divinely appointed means of
grace.
If we turn back to Old Testament times,
we have no lack of instances of prayer miracles. The saints of those days were
well acquainted with the power of prayer to move God to do great things. Natural
laws did not stand in the way of Almighty God when He was appealed to by His
praying ones. What a marvellous record is that of Moses as those successive
plagues were visited upon Egypt in the effort to make Pharaoh let the children
of Israel go that they might serve God! As one after another of these plagues
came, Pharaoh would beseech Moses, "Entreat the Lord your God that he may take
away this death." And as the plagues themselves were miracles, prayer removed
them as quickly as they were sent by Almighty God. The same hand which sent
these destructive agencies upon Egypt was moved by the prayers of His servant
Moses to remove these same plagues. And the removal of the plagues in answer to
prayer was as remarkable a display of Divine power as was the sending of the
plagues in the first instance. The removal in answer to prayer would do as much
to show God's being and His power as would the plagues themselves. They were
miracles of prayer.
All down the line in Old
Testament days we see these prayer miracles. God's praying servants had not the
least doubt that prayer would work marvellous results and bring the supernatural
into the affairs of earth. Miracles and prayer went hand in hand. They were
companions. The one was the cause, the other was the effect. The one brought the
other into existence. The miracle was the proof that God heard and answered
prayer. The miracle was the Divine demonstration that God, who was in heaven,
interfered in earth's affairs, intervened to help men, and worked supernaturally
if need be to accomplish His purposes in answer to
prayer.
Passing to the days of the early
Church, we find the same Divine record of prayer miracles. The sad news came to
Peter that Dorcas was dead and he was wanted at Joppa. Promptly he made his way
to that place. Peter put everybody out of the room, and then he kneeled down and
prayed, and with faith said, "Tabitha, arise," and she opened her eyes and sat
up. Knee work on the part of Peter did the work. Prayer brought things to pass
and saved Dorcas for further work on
earth.
Paul was on that noted journey to Rome
under guard, and had been shipwrecked on an island. The chief man of the island
was Publius, and his old father was critically ill of a bloody flux. Paul laid
his hands on the old man, and prayed for him, and God came to the rescue and
healed the sick man. Prayer brought the thing desired to pass. God interfered
with the laws of nature, either suspending or setting them aside for a season,
and answered the prayer of this praying servant of His. And the answer to prayer
among those heathen people convinced them that a supernatural power was at work
among them. In fact so true was this that they seemed to think a supernatural
being had come among them.
Peter was put in
prison by Herod after he had killed James with the sword. The young Church was
greatly concerned, but they neither lost heart nor gave themselves over to
needless fretting and worrying. They had learned before this from whence their
help came. They had been schooled in the lesson of prayer. God had intervened
before in the behalf of His servants and interfered when His cause was at stake.
"Prayer was made without ceasing of the Church unto God for him." An angel on
swift wings comes to the rescue, and in a marvellous and supernatural way
releases Peter and leaves the prison doors locked. Locks and prison doors and an
unfriendly king cannot stand in the way of Almighty God when His people cry in
prayer unto Him. Miracles if need be will be wrought in their behalf to fulfill
His promises and to carry forward His plans. After this order does the Word of
God illustrate and enlarge and confirm the possibilities of prayer by what may
be termed "Prayer miracles."
How quickly to our
straits follow our enlargements! God wrought a wonderful work through Samson in
enabling him with a crude instrument, the jaw bone of an ass, to slay a thousand
men, giving him a great deliverance. Shortly afterward he was abnormally
thirsty, and he was unable to obtain any water. It seemed as if he would perish
with thirst. God had saved him from the hands of the Philistines. Could he not
as well save him from thirst? So Samson cried unto the Lord, and "God clave a
hollow place that was in the jaw, and there came water thereout, and when he had
drunk, his spirit came again and he revived." God could bring water out of the
jaw bone just as well as He could give victory by it to Samson. God could change
that which had been death-dealing to His enemies and make it life-giving to His
servant. God can and will work a miracle in answer to prayer in order to deliver
His friends, sooner than He will work one to destroy His enemies. He does both,
however, in answer to prayer.
All natural
forces are under God's control. He did not create the world and put it under
law, and then retire from it, to work out its own destiny, irrespective of the
welfare of His intelligent creatures. Natural laws are simply God's laws, by
which He governs and regulates all things in nature. Nature is nothing but God's
servant. God is above nature, God is not the slave of nature. This being true,
God can and will suspend the working of nature's laws, can hold them in abeyance
by His almighty hand, can for the time being set them aside, to fulfill His
higher purposes in redemption. It is no violation of nature's laws when, in
answer to prayer, He who is above nature makes nature His servant, and causes
nature to tarry out His plans and
purposes.
This is the explanation of that
wonderful prayer miracle of Old Testament times, when Joshua, in the strength
and power of the Lord God, commanded the sun and moon to stand still in order to
give time to complete the victory over the enemies of Israel. Why should it be
thought a thing incredible that the God of nature and of grace should interfere
with His own natural laws for a short season in answer to prayer, and for the
good of His cause? Is God tied hand and foot? Has He so circumscribed Himself
that He cannot operate the law of prayer? Is the law of nature superior to the
law of prayer? Not by any means. He is the God of prayer as well as the God of
nature. Both prayer and nature have God as their Maker, their Ruler and their
Executor. And prayer is God's servant, just as nature is His
servant.
The prayer force in God's government
is as strong as any other force, and all natural and other forces must give way
before the force of prayer. Sun, moon and stars are under God's control in
answer to prayer. Rain, sunshine and drouth obey His will. "Fire and hail, snow
and vapour, stormy wind fulfilling his word." Disease and health are governed by
Him. All, all things in heaven and earth, are absolutely under the control of
Him who made heaven and earth, and who governs all things according to His own
will.
Prayer still works miracles among men and
brings to pass great things. It is as true now as when James wrote his Epistle,
"The fervent, effectual prayer of a righteous man availeth much." And when the
records of eternity are read out to an assembled world, then will it appear how
much prayer has wrought in this world. Little is now seen of the fruits of
prayer compared to all that it has accomplished and is accomplishing. At the
judgment day, then will God disclose the things which were brought to pass in
this world through the prayers of the saints. Many occurrences which are now
taken as a matter of course will then be seen to have happened because of the
Lord's praying ones.
The work of George Muller
in Bristol, England, was a miracle of the nineteenth century. It will take the
opening of the books at the great judgment day to disclose all he wrought
through prayer. His orphanage, in which hundreds of fatherless and motherless
children were cared for, to sustain which this godly man never asked any one for
money with which to pay its running expenses, is a marvel of modern times. His
practice was always to ask God for just what was needed, and the answers which
came to him read like a record of apostolic times. He prayed for everything and
trusted implicitly to God to supply all his needs. And it is a matter of record
that never did he and the orphans ever lack for any good
thing.
Of a holy man who has done so much for
Christ and suffering humanity, it was said at the grave about
him:
"He
prayed up the walls of an hospital, and the hearts of the nurses. He prayed
mission stations into being, and missionaries into faith. He prayed open the
hearts of the rich, and gold from the most distant
lands."
Luther
is quoted as once saying: "The Christian's trade is praying." Certainly, for a
great reason, the preacher's trade should be praying. We fear greatly that many
preachers know nothing of this trade of praying, and hence they never succeed at
this trade. A severe apprenticeship in the trade of praying must be served in
order to become a journeyman in it. Not only is it true that there are few
journeymen at work at this praying trade, but numbers have never even been
apprentices at praying. No wonder so little is accomplished by them. God and the
supernatural are left out of their
programmes.
Many do not understand this trade
of praying because they have never learned it, and hence do not work at it. Many
miracles ought to be worked by our praying. Why not? Is the arm of the Lord
shortened that He cannot save? Is His ear heavy that He cannot hear? Has prayer
lost its power because iniquity abounds and the love of many has grown cold? Has
God changed from what He once was? To all these queries we enter an emphatic
negative. God can as easily to-day work miracles by praying as He did in the
days of old. "I am the Lord; I change not." "Is anything too hard for the
Lord?"
He who works miracles by praying will
first of all work the chief miracle on himself. Oh, that we might fully
understand well the Christian's trade of praying, and follow the trade day by
day and thus make to ourselves great spiritual wealth!
Wisdom and Revelation distinguished by Experience and
Scripture. By Experience. Take a weak understanding (but one exceeding holy),
having little knowledge of God by way of discursive wisdom and laying this
thing to that, and so knowing God: such poor soul is oftentimes hardly able to
speak wisely and he will know more of God in one prayer than a great scholar
(though also very holy) hath known of Him in all his life; God often deals
thus with the weak who are very holy; for if such were shut up to knowing God
by way of a sanctified reason, large understandings would have infinite
advantage of them and they would grow little in grace and holiness; therefore
God makes a supply by breaking in upon their spirits by such irradiations as
these. -- THOS.
GOODWIN
IN the fearful
contest in this world between God and the devil, between good and evil, and
between heaven and hell, prayer is the mighty force for overcoming Satan, giving
dominion over sin, and defeating hell. Only praying leaders are to be counted on
in this dreadful conflict. Praying men alone are to be put to the front. These
are the only sort who are able to successfully contend with all the evil forces.
The "prayers of all saints" are a perpetual
force against all the powers of darkness. These prayers are a mighty energy in
overcoming the world, the flesh and the devil and in shaping the destiny of
God's movements, to overcome evil and get the victory over the devil and all his
works. The character and energy of God's movements lie in prayer. Victory is to
come at the end of praying.
The wonders of
God's power are to be kept alive, made real and present, and repeated only by
prayer. God is not now so evident in the world, so almighty in manifestation as
of old, not because miracles have passed away, nor because God has ceased to
work, but because prayer has been shorn of its simplicity, its majesty, and its
power. God still lives, and miracles still live while God lives and acts, for
miracles are God's ways of acting. Prayer is dwarfed, withered and petrified
when faith in God is staggered by doubts of His ability, or through the
shrinking caused by fear. When faith has a telescopic, far-off vision of God,
prayer works no miracles, and brings no marvels of deliverance. But when God is
seen by faith's closest, fullest eye, prayer makes a history of
wonders.
Think about God. Make much of Him,
till He broadens and fills the horizon of faith. Then prayer will come into its
marvellous inheritance of wonders. The marvels of prayer are seen when we
remember that God's purposes are changed by prayer, God's vengeance is stayed by
prayer, and God's penalty is remitted by prayer. The whole range of God's
dealing with man is affected by prayer. Here is a force which must be
increasingly used, that of prayer, a force to which all the events of life ought
to be subjected.
To "pray without ceasing," to
pray in everything, and to pray everywhere -- these commands of continuity are
expressive of the sleepless energy of prayer, of the exhaustless possibilities
of prayer, and of its exacting necessity. Prayer can do all things. Prayer must
do all
things.
"Prayer
is the simplest form of
speech
That
infant lips can try;
Prayer the
sublimest strains that
reach
The
majesty on
high."
Prayer
is asking God for something, and for something which He has promised. Prayer is
using the divinely appointed means for obtaining what we need and for
accomplishing what God proposes to do on
earth.
"Prayer
is appointed to
convey
The
blessings God designs to give;
Long as they
live should Christians
pray,
They
learn to pray when first they
live."
And
prayer brings to us blessings which we need, and which only God can give, and
which prayer can alone convey to us.
In their
broadest fullness, the possibilities of prayer are to be found in the very
nature of prayer. This service of prayer is not a mere rite, a ceremony through
which we go, a sort of performance. Prayer is going to God for something needed
and desired. Prayer is simply asking God to do for us what He has promised us He
will do if we ask Him. The answer is a part of prayer, and is God's part of it.
God's doing the thing asked for is as much a part of the prayer as the asking of
the thing is prayer. Asking is man's part. Giving is God's part. The praying
belongs to us. The answer belongs to God.
Man
makes the plea and God makes the answer. The plea and the answer compose the
prayer. God is more ready, more willing and more anxious to give the answer than
man is to give the asking. The possibilities of prayer lie in the ability of man
to ask large things and in the ability of God to give large
things.
God's only condition and limitation of
prayer is found in the character of the one who prays. The measure of our faith
and praying is the measure of His giving. Like as our Lord said to the blind
man, "According to your faith be it unto you," so it is the same in praying,
"According to the measure of your asking, be it unto you." God measures the
answer according to the prayer. He is limited by the law of prayer in the
measure of the answers He gives to prayer. As is the measure of prayer, so will
be the answer.
If the person praying has the
characteristics which warrant praying, then the possibilities are illimitable.
They are declared to be "all things whatsoever." Here is no limitation in
character or kind, in circumference or condition. The man who prays can pray for
anything and for everything, and God will give everything and anything. If we
limit God in the asking, He will be limited in the
giving.
Looking ahead, God declares in His Word
that the wonder of wonders will be so great in the last days that everything
animate and inanimate will be excited by His
power:
"For
behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former shall not be
remembered nor come to mind.
"But be ye glad
and rejoice, forever, in that which I create; for behold I create Jerusalem a
rejoicing, and her people a
joy."
But
these days of God's mighty working, the days of His magnificent and
wonder-creating power, will be days of magnificent
praying.
"And
it shall come to pass that before they call, I will answer, and while they are
yet speaking, I will
hear."
It has
ever been so. God's marvellous, miracle-working times have been times of
marvellous, miracle-working praying. The greatest thing in God's worship by His
own estimate is praying. Its chief service and its distinguishing feature is
prayer:
"Even
them will I bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of
prayer; their burnt offering and their sacrifices shall be accepted upon my
altar, for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all
people."
This
was true under all the gorgeous rites and parade of ceremonies under the Jewish
worship. Sacrifice, offering and the atoning blood were all to be impregnated
with prayer. The smoke of burnt offering and perfumed incense which filled God's
house was to be but the flame of prayer, and all of God's people were to be
anointed priests to minister at His altar of prayer. So all things were to be
done with mighty prayer, because mighty prayer was the fruitage and inspiration
of mighty faith. But much more is it now true every way under the more simple
service of the Gospel.
The course of nature,
the movements of the planets, and the clouds, have yielded to the influence of
prayer, and God has changed and checked the order of the sun and the seasons
under the mighty energies of prayer. It is only necessary to note the remarkable
incident when Joshua, through this divine means of prayer, caused the sun and
the moon to stand still in order that a more complete victory could be given to
the armies of Israel in the contest with the armies of the
Amorites.
If we believe God's word, we are
bound to believe that prayer affects God, and affects Him mightily; that prayer
avails, and that prayer avails mightily. There are wonders in prayer because
there are wonders in God. Prayer has no talismanic influence. It is no mere
fetish. It has no so-called powers of magic. It is simply making known our
requests to God for things agreeable to His will in the name of Christ. It is
just yielding our requests to a Father, who knows all things, who has control of
all things, and who is able to do all things. Prayer is infinite ignorance
trusting to the wisdom of God. Prayer is the voice of need crying out to Him who
is inexhaustible in resources. Prayer is helplessness reposing with childlike
confidence on the word of its Father in heaven. Prayer is but the verbal
expression of the heart of perfect confidence in the infinite wisdom, the power
and the riches of Almighty God, who has placed at our command in prayer
everything we need.
How all the gracious
results of such gracious times are to come to the world through prayer, we are
taught in God's Word. God's heart seems to overflow with delight at the prospect
of thus blessing His people. By the mouth of the Prophet Joel, God thus
speaks:
"Fear
not, O land; be glad and rejoice; for the Lord will do great
things.
"Be not afraid, ye beasts of the field;
for the pastures of the wilderness do spring, for the tree beareth her fruit,
the fig-tree and the vine do yield their
strength.
"Be glad then, ye children of Zion,
and rejoice in the Lord your God; for he hath given you the former rain
moderately, and he will cause to come down for you the rain, the former rain,
and the latter rain in the first month.
"And
the floors shall be full of wheat, and the fats shall overflow with wine and
oil.
"And I will restore to you the years that
the locust hath eaten, the canker worm and the caterpillar, and the palmer worm,
my great army which I sent among you.
"And ye
shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God,
that hath dealt wondrously with you; and my people shall never be
ashamed.
"And ye shall know that I am in the
midst of Israel, and that I am the Lord your God, and none else; and my people
shall never be
ashamed."
What
wonderful material things are these which God proposes to bestow upon His
people! They are marvellous temporal blessings He promises to bestow on them.
They almost astonish the mind when they are studied. But God does not restrict
His large blessings to temporal things. Looking down the ages, He foresees
Pentecost, and makes these exceeding great and precious promises concerning the
outpouring of the Holy Spirit, these very words being quoted by Peter on that
glad day of
Pentecost:
"And
it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh;
and your sons shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men
shall see visions;
"And also upon the servants
and upon the handmaidens in those days will I pour out my
Spirit.
"And I will show wonders in the heavens
and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of
smoke;
"The sun shall be turned into darkness,
and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the Lord shall
come.
"And it shall come to pass that whosoever
shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered; for in Mount Zion and in
Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the Lord hath said, and in the remnant whom
the Lord shall
call."
But
these marvellous blessings will not be bestowed upon the people by sovereign
power, nor be given unconditionally. God's people must do something precedent to
such glorious results. Fasting and prayer must play an important part as
conditions of receiving such large blessings. By the mouth of the same prophet,
God thus
speaks:
"Therefore
also now, saith the Lord, turn ye to me with all your heart, and with fasting,
and with weeping, and with mourning;
"And rend
your heart, and not your garments; and turn unto the Lord your God; for he is
gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him
of the evil.
"Who knoweth if he will turn and
repent, and leave a blessing behind him, even a meat offering, and a drink
offering, unto the Lord your God?
"Blow the
trumpet in Zion; sanctify a fast, call a solemn
assembly.
"Gather the people; sanctify the
congregation; assemble the elders; gather the children; and those that suck the
breasts; let the bridegroom go forth of his chamber, and the bride out of her
closet.
"Let the priests, the ministers of the
Lord, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, Spare thy people,
O Lord, and give not thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule
over them; Wherefore should they say among the people, Where is their
God?
"Then will the Lord be jealous for his
land, and pity his people.
"Yea, the Lord will
answer and say unto his people, Behold I will send you corn, and wine, and oil,
and ye shall be satisfied therewith; and I will no more make you a reproach
among the
heathen."
Prayer
reaches even as far as does the presence of God go. It reaches everywhere
because God is everywhere. Let us read from Psalm
139:1:
"If I
ascend up into heaven, thou art there; if I make my bed in hell, behold thou art
there.
"If I take the wings of the morning and
dwell in the uttermost part of the sea;
"Even
there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold
me."
This may
be said as truly of prayer as it is said of the God of prayer. The mysteries of
death have been fathomed by prayer, and its victims have been brought back to
life by the power of prayer, because God holds dominion over death, and prayer
reaches where God reigns. Elisha and Elijah both invaded the realms of death by
their prayers, and asserted and established the power of God as the power of
prayer. Peter by prayer brings back to life the saintly Dorcas to the early
Church. Paul doubtless exercised the power of prayer as he fell upon and
embraced Eutychus who fell out of the window when Paul preached at
night.
Our Lord several times explicitly
declared the far-reaching possibilities and the illimitable nature of prayer as
covering "all things whatsoever." The conditions of prayer are exalted into a
personal union with Himself. That successful praying glorified God was the
condition upon which labourers of first quality and sufficient in numbers were
to be secured in order to press forward God's work in the world. The giving of
all good things is conditioned upon asking for them. The giving of the Holy
Spirit to God's children is based upon the asking of the children of God. God's
will on earth can only be secured by prayer. Daily bread is obtained and
sanctified by prayer. Reverence, forgiveness of sins, and deliverance from the
evil one, and salvation from temptation, are in the hands of
prayer.
The first jewelled foundation Christ
lays as the basic principle of His religion in the Sermon on the Mount reads on
this wise: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven." As prayer follows from the inner sense of need, and prayer is the
utterance of a deep poverty-stricken spirit, so it is evident he who is "poor in
spirit" is where he can pray and where he does
pray.
Prayer is a tremendous force in the
world. Take this picture of prayer and its wonderful possibilities. God's cause
is quiet and motionless on the earth. An angel, strong and impatient to be of
service, waits round about the throne of God in heaven, and in order to move
things on earth and give impetus to the movements of God's cause in this world,
he gathers all the prayers of all God's saints in all ages, and puts them before
God just like Aaron used to cloud, flavour and sweeten himself with the
delicious incense when he entered the holy sanctuary, made awful by the
immediate presence of God. The angel impregnates all the air with that holy
offering of prayers, and then takes its fiery body and casts it on the
earth.
Note the remarkable result. "There were
voices and thunderings and lightnings and an earthquake." What tremendous force
is this which has thus convulsed the earth? The answer is that it is the
"prayers of the saints," turned loose by the angel round about the throne, who
has charge of those prayers. This mighty force is prayer, like the power of
earth's mightiest dynamite.
Take another fact
showing the wonders of prayer wrought by Almighty God in answer to the praying
of His true prophet. The nation of God's people was fearfully apostate in head
and heart and life. A man of God went to the apostate king with the fearful
message which meant so much to the land, "There shall not be rain nor dew these
years but according to my word." Whence this mighty force which can stay the
clouds, seal up the rain, and hold back the dew? Who is this who speaks with
such authority? Is there any force which can do this on earth? Only one, and
that force is prayer, wielded in the hands of a praying prophet of God. It is he
who has influence with God and over God in prayer, who thus dares to assume such
authority over the forces of nature. This man Elijah is skilled in the use of
that tremendous force. "And Elijah prayed earnestly, and it rained not on the
earth for three years and six months."
But this
is not all the story. He who could by prayer lock up the clouds and seal up the
rain, could also unlock. the clouds and unseal the rain by the same mighty power
of prayer. "And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth gave
forth her fruit."
Mighty is the power of
prayer. Wonderful are its fruits. Remarkable things are brought to pass by men
of prayer. Many are the wonders of prayer wrought by an Almighty hand. The
evidences of prayer's accomplishments almost stagger us. They challenge our
faith. They encourage our expectations when we
pray.
From a cursory compend like this, we get
a bird's-eye view of the large possibilities of prayer and the urgent necessity
of prayer. We see how God commits Himself into the hands of those who truly
pray. Great are the wonders of prayer because great is the God who hears and
answers prayer. Great are these wonders because great are the rich promises made
by a great God to those who pray.
We have seen
prayer's far-reaching possibilities and its absolute, unquestioned necessity,
and we have also seen that the foregoing particulars and elaboration were
requisite in order to bring the subject more clearly, truly and strongly before
our minds. The Church more than ever needs profound convictions of the vast
importance of prayer in prosecuting the work committed to it. More praying must
be done and better praying if the Church shall be able to perform the difficult,
delicate and responsible task given to it by her Lord and Master. Defeat awaits
a non-praying Church. Success is sure to follow a Church given to much prayer.
The supernatural element in the Church, without which it must fail, comes only
through praying. More time, in this busy bustling age, must be given to prayer
by a God-called Church. More thought must be given to prayer in this
thoughtless, silly age of superficial religion. More heart and soul must be in
the praying that is done if the Church would go forth in the strength of her
Lord and perform the wonders which is her heritage by Divine
promise.
"O
Spirit of the Living
God,
In
all thy plenitude of
grace,
Where'er
the foot of man hath
trod,
Descend
on our apostate
race.
"Give
tongues of fire and hearts of
love,
To
preach the reconciling word,
Give power and
unction from
above,
Where'er
the joyful sound is
heard."
It
might be in order to give an instance or two in the life of Rev. John Wesley,
showing some remarkable displays of spiritual power. Many times it is stated
this noted man gathered his company together, and prayed all night, or till the
mighty power of God came upon them. It was at a Watch Night service, at Fetter
Lane, December 31, 1738, when Charles and John Wesley, with Whitfield, sat up
till after midnight singing and praying. This is the
account:
"About
three o'clock in the morning, as we were continuing instant in prayer, the power
of God came mightily upon us, so that many cried out for exceeding joy, and many
fell to the ground. As soon as we had recovered a little from that awe and
amazement at the presence of His Majesty, we broke out with one voice, 'We
praise thee, O God! We acknowledge thee to be the
Lord!'"
On
another occasion, Mr. Wesley gives us this
account:
"After
midnight, about a hundred of us walked home together, singing, rejoicing and
praising
God."
Often
does this godly man make the record to this effect, "We continued in ministering
the Word and in prayer and praise till
morning."
One of his all-night wrestlings in
prayer alone with God is said to have greatly affected a Catholic priest, who
was really awakened by the occurrence to a realization of his spiritual
condition.
As often as God manifested His power
in Scriptural times in working wonders through prayer, He has not left Himself
without witness in modern times. Prayer brings the Holy Spirit upon men to-day
in answer to importunate, continued prayer just as it did before Pentecost. The
wonders of prayer have not ceased.
Again a poor soul is tempted to doubt the being of a God;
arguments by way of reason and wisdom may convince him he may get a little
light from them; but sometimes God will come into his soul with an immediate
beam and scatter all his doubts, more than a thousand arguments can do; the
way of wisdom thus of knowing there is a God, that unties the knot; but the
other cuts it in pieces presently; so it is in all temptations else a man goes
the way of wisdom and sanctified reason, and looks into his own heart and
there sees the work of grace and argues from all God's dealings with him; yet
all these satisfy not a man: but God comes with a light in his spirit and all
his bolts and shackles are knocked off in a moment; here we see the way of
Wisdom and the way of Revelation. -- THOS.
GOODWIN
PRAYER and the
Divine providence are closely related. They stand in close companionship. They
cannot possibly be separated. So closely connected are they that to deny one is
to abolish the other. Prayer supposes a providence, while providence is the
result of and belongs to prayer. All answers to prayer are but the intervention
of the providence of God in the affairs of men. Providence has to do specially
with praying people. Prayer, providence and the Holy Spirit are a trinity, which
cooperate with each other and are in perfect harmony with one another. Prayer is
but the request of man for God through the Holy Spirit to interfere in behalf of
him who prays.
What is termed providence is
the Divine superintendence over earth and its affairs. It implies gracious
provisions which Almighty God makes for all His creatures, animate and
inanimate, intelligent or otherwise. Once admit that God is the Creator and
Preserver of all men, and concede that He is wise and intelligent, and logically
we are driven to the conclusion that Almighty God has a direct superintendence
of those whom He has created and whom He preserves in being. In fact creation
and preservation suppose a superintending providence. What is called Divine
providence is simply Almighty God governing the world for its best interests,
and overseeing everything for the good of
mankind.
Men talk about a "general providence"
as separate from a "special providence." There is no general providence but what
is made up of special providences. A general supervision on the part of God
supposes a special and individual supervision of each person, yea, even every
creature, animal and all alike.
God is
everywhere, watching, superintending, overseeing, governing everything in the
highest interest of man, and carrying forward His plans and executing His
purposes in creation and redemption. He is not an absentee God. He did not make
the world with all that is in it, and turn it over to so-called natural laws,
and then retire into the secret places of the universe having no regard for it
or for the working of His laws. His hand is on the throttle. The work is not
beyond His control. Earth's inhabitants and its affairs are not running
independent of Almighty God.
Any and all
providences are special providences, and prayer and this sort of providences
work hand in hand. God's hand is in everything. None are beyond Him nor beneath
His notice. Not that God orders everything which comes to pass. Man is still a
free agent, but the wisdom of Almighty God comes out when we remember that while
man is free, and the devil is abroad in the land, God can superintend and
overrule earth's affairs for the good of man and for His glory, and cause even
the wrath of man to praise Him.
Nothing occurs
by accident under the superintendence of an all-wise and perfectly just God.
Nothing happens by chance in God's moral or natural government. God is a God of
order, a God of law, but none the less a superintendent in the interest of His
intelligent and redeemed creatures. Nothing can take place without the knowledge
of
God.
"His
all surrounding sight
surveys
Our
rising and our rest;
Our public
walks, our private
ways,
The
secrets of our
breasts."
Jesus
Christ sets this matter at rest when He says, "Are not two sparrows sold for a
farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But
the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not, therefore, ye are of
more value than many sparrows."
God cannot be
ruled out of the world. The doctrine of prayer brings Him directly into the
world, and moves Him to a direct interference with all of this world's
affairs.
To rule Almighty God out of the
providences of life is to strike a direct blow at prayer and its efficacy.
Nothing takes place in the world without God's consent, yet not in a sense that
He either approves everything or is responsible for all things which happen. God
is not the author of sin.
The question is
sometimes asked, "Is God in everything?" as if there are some things which are
outside of the government of God, beyond His attention, with which He is not
concerned. If God is not in everything, what is the Christian doing praying
according to Paul's directions to the
Philippians?
"Be
careful for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with
thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto
God."
Are we
to pray for some things and about things with which God has nothing to do?
According to the doctrine that God is not in everything, then we are outside the
realm of God when "in everything we make our requests unto
God."
Then what will we do with that large
promise so comforting to all of God's saints in all ages and in all climes, a
promise which belongs to prayer and which is embraced in a special providence:
"And we know that all things work together for good to them that love
God"?
If God is not in everything, then what
are the things we are to expect from the "all things" which "work together for
good to them that love God"? And if God is not in everything in His providence
what are the things which are to be left out of our praying? We can lay it down
as a proposition, borne out by Scripture, which has a sure foundation, that
nothing ever comes into the life of God's saints without His consent. God is
always there when it occurs. He is not far away. He whose eye is on the sparrow
is also upon His saints. His presence which fills immensity is always where His
saints are. "Certainly I will be with thee," is the word of God to every child
of His.
"The angel of the Lord encampeth round
about them that fear him and delivereth them." And nothing can touch those who
fear God only with the permission of the angel of the Lord. Nothing can break
through the encampment without the permission of the captain of the Lord's
hosts. Sorrows, afflictions, want, trouble, or even death, cannot enter this
Divine encampment without the consent of Almighty God, and even then it is to be
used by God in His plans for the good of His saints and for carrying out His
plans and
purposes:
"For
I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor
powers, nor things present, nor things to
come,
"Nor height, nor depth, nor any other
creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ
Jesus our
Lord."
These
evil things, unpleasant and afflictive, may come with Divine permission, but God
is on the spot, His hand is in all of them, and He sees to it that they are
woven into His plans. He causes them to be overruled for the good of His people,
and eternal good is brought out of them. These things, with hundreds of others,
belong to the disciplinary processes of Almighty God in administering His
government for the children of men.
The
providence of God reaches as far as the realm of prayer. It has to do with
everything for which we pray. Nothing is too small for the eye of God, nothing
too insignificant for His notice and His care. God's providence has to do with
even the stumbling of the feet of His
saints:
"For
he shall give his angels charge concerning thee, to keep thee in all thy
ways.
"They shall bear thee up in their hands,
lest thou dash thy foot against a
stone."
Read
again our Lord's words about the sparrow, for He says, "Five sparrows are sold
for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God." Paul asks the
pointed question, "Doth God care for oxen?" His care reaches to the smallest
things and has to do with the most insignificant matters which concern men. He
who believes in the God of providence is prepared to see His hand in all things
which come to him, and can pray over
everything.
Not that the saint who trusts the
God of providence, and who takes all things to God in prayer, can explain the
mysteries of Divine providence, but the praying ones recognize God in
everything, see Him in all that comes to them, and are ready to say as John said
to Peter at the Sea of Galilee, "It is the
Lord."
Praying saints do not presume to
interpret God's dealings with them nor undertake to explain God's providences,
but they have learned to trust God in the dark as well as in the light, to have
faith in God even when "cares like a wild deluge come, and storms of sorrow
fall."
"Though he slay me, yet will I trust
him." Praying saints rest themselves upon the words of Jesus to Peter, "What I
do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter." None but the praying
ones can see God's hands in the providences of life. "Blessed are the pure in
heart, for they shall see God," shall see God here in His providences, in His
Word, in His Church. These are they who do not rule God out of earth's affairs,
and who believe God interferes with matters of earth for
them.
While God's providence is over all men,
yet His supervision and administration of His government are peculiarly in the
interest of His people.
Prayer brings God's
providence into action. Prayer puts God to work in overseeing and directing
earth's affairs for the good of men. Prayer opens the way when it is shut up or
straitened.
Providence deals more especially
with temporalities. It is in this realm that the providence of God shines
brightest and is most apparent. It has to do with food and raiment, with
business difficulties, with strangely interposing and saving from danger, and
with helping in emergencies at very opportune and critical
times.
The feeding of the Israelites during the
wilderness journey is a striking illustration of the providence of God in taking
care of the temporal wants of His people. His dealings with those people show
how He provided for them in that long
pilgrimage.
"Day
by day the manna fell,
O to learn this lesson well!
Still by constant
mercy fed,
Give me, Lord, my daily bread.
"Day by day the promise
reads,
Daily strength for daily needs;
Cast foreboding fears away,
Take the manna of
to-day."
Our
Lord teaches this same lesson of a providence which clothes and feeds His
people, in the Sermon on the Mount, when He says, "Take no thought what ye shall
eat, or what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on." Then
He directs attention to the fact that it is God's providence which feeds the
fowls of the air, clothes the lilies of the field, and asks if God does all this
for birds and flowers, will He not care for
them?
All of this teaching leads up to the need
of a childlike, implicit trust in an overruling providence, which looks after
the temporal wants of the children of men. And let it be noted specially that
all this teaching stands closely connected in the utterances of our Lord with
what He says about prayer, thus closely connecting a Divine oversight with
prayer and its promises.
We have an impressive
lesson on Divine providence in the case of Elijah when he was sent to the brook
Cherith, where God actually employed the ravens to feed His prophet. Here was an
interposition so plain that God cannot be ruled out of life's temporalities.
Before God will allow His servant to want bread, He moves the birds of the air
to do His bidding and take care of His
prophet.
Nor was this all. When the brook ran
dry, God sent him to a poor widow, who had just enough meal and oil for the
urgent needs of the good woman and her son. Yet she divided with him her last
morsel of bread. What was the result? The providence of God interposed, and as
long as the drouth lasted, the cruse of oil never failed nor did the meal in the
barrel give out.
The Old Testament sparkles
with illustrations of the provisions of Almighty God for His people, and show
clearly God's overruling providence. In fact the Old Testament is largely the
account of a providence which dealt with a peculiar people, anticipating their
every temporal want, which ministered to them when in emergencies, and which
sanctified to them their troubles.
It is worth
while to read that old hymn of Newton's, which has in it so much of the
providence of
God:
"Though
troubles assail, and dangers affright,
Though friends should all fail, and
foes all unite,
Yet one thing secures me, whatever betide,
The promise
assures us, the Lord will provide.
"The birds without barns, or
storehouse are fed,
From them let us learn, to trust for our bread;
His
saints what is fitting, shall ne'er be denied,
So long as it's written, the
Lord will
provide."
In
fact many of our old hymns are filled with sentiments in song about a Divine
providence, which are worth while to be read and sung even in this
day.
God is in the most afflictive and
sorrowing events of life. All such events are subjects of prayer, and this is so
for the reason that everything which comes into the life of the praying one is
in the providence of God, and takes place under His superintending hand. Some
would rule God out of the sad and hard things of life. They tell us that God has
nothing to do with certain events which bring such grief to us. They say that
God is not in the death of children, that they die from natural causes, and that
it is but the working of natural laws.
Let us
ask what are nature's laws but the laws of God, the laws by which God rules the
world? And what is nature anyway? And who made nature? How great the need to
know that God is above nature, is in control of nature, and is in nature? We
need to know that nature or natural laws are but the servants of Almighty God
who made these laws, and that He is directly in them, and they are but the
Divine servants to carry out God's gracious designs, and are made to execute His
gracious purposes. The God of providence, the God to whom the Christians pray,
and the God who interposes in behalf of the children of men for their good, is
above nature, in perfect and absolute control of all that belongs to nature. And
no law of nature can crush the life out of even a child without God giving His
consent, and without such a sad event occurring directly under His all-seeing
eye, and without His being immediately
present.
David believed this doctrine when he
fasted and prayed for the life of his child, for why pray and fast for a baby to
be spared, if God has nothing to do with its death should it
die?
Moreover, "does care for oxen," and have a
direct oversight of the sparrows which fall to the ground, and yet have nothing
to do with the going out of this world of an immortal child? Still further, the
death of a child, no matter if it should come alone as some people claim by the
operation of the laws of nature, let it be kept in mind that it is a great
affliction to the parents of the child. Where do these innocent parents come in
under any such doctrine? It becomes a great sorrow to mother and father. Are
they not to recognize the hand of God in the death of the child? And is there no
providence or Divine oversight in the taking away of their child to them? David
recognized the facts clearly that God had to do with keeping his child in life;
that prayer might avail in saving his child from death, and that when the child
died it was because God had ordered it. Prayer and providence in all this affair
worked in harmonious cooperation, and David thoroughly understood it. No child
ever dies without the direct permission of Almighty God, and such an event takes
place in His providence for wise and beneficent ends. God works it into His
plans concerning the child himself and the parents and all concerned. Moreover,
it is a subject of prayer whether the child lives or
dies.
"In
each event of life how clear,
Thy ruling hand I see;
Each blessing to my
soul most dear,
Because conferred by Thee."
A proper idea of prayer is the pouring out of the soul before
God, with the hand of faith placed on the head of the Sacrificial Offering,
imploring mercy, and presenting itself a free-will offering of itself unto
God, giving up body, soul and spirit, to be guided and governed as may seem
good to His heavenly wisdom, desiring only perfectly to love Him, and to serve
Him with all its powers, at all times, while He has a being. -- ADAM
CLARKE
TWO kinds of
providences are seen in God's dealings with men, direct providences and
permissive providences. God orders some things, others He permits. But when He
permits an afflictive dispensation to come into the life of His saint, even
though it originate in a wicked mind, and it be the act of a sinner, yet before
it strikes His saint and touches him, it becomes God's providence to the saint.
In other words, God consents to some things in this world, without in the least
being responsible for them, or in the least excusing him who originates them,
many of them very painful and afflictive, but such events or things always
become to the saint of God the providence of God to him. So that the saint can
say in each and all of these sad and distressing experiences, "It is the Lord;
let him do what seemeth him good." Or with the Psalmist, he may say, "I was
dumb; I opened not my mouth, because thou didst it."
This was the explanation of all of Job's
severe afflictions. They came to him in the providence of God, even though they
had their origin in the mind of Satan, who devised them and put them into
execution. God gave Satan permission to afflict Job, to take away his property,
and to rob him of his children. But Job did not attribute these things to blind
chance, nor to accident, neither did he charge them to Satanic agency, but said,
"The Lord hath given, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the
Lord." He took these things as coming from his God, whom he feared and served
and trusted.
And to the same effect are Job's
words to his wife when she left God out of the question, and wickedly told her
husband, "Curse God and die." Job replied, "Thou speakest as one of the foolish
women speaketh. What! Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not
receive evil?"
It is no surprise under such a
view of God's dealings with Job that it should be recorded of this man of faith,
"In all this did not Job sin with his lips," and in another place was it said,
"In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly." In nothing concerning
God and the events of life do men talk more foolishly and even wickedly than in
ignorantly making up their judgments on the providences of God in this world. O
that we had men after the type of Job, who though afflictions and privations are
severe in the extreme, yet they see the hand of God in providence and openly
recognize God in it.
The sequel to all these
painful experiences are but illustrations of that familiar text of Paul, "And we
know that all things work together for good to them that love God." Job received
back more in the end than was ever taken away from him. He emerged from under
these tremendous troubles with victory, and became till this day the exponent
and example of great patience and strong faith in God's providences. "Ye have
heard of the patience of Job," rings down the line of Divine revelation. God
took hold of the evil acts of Satan, and worked them into His plans and brought
great good out of them. He made evil work out for good without in the least
endorsing the evil or conniving at it.
We have
the same gracious truth of Divine providence evidenced in the story of Joseph
and his brethren, who sold him wickedly into Egypt and forsook him and deceived
their old father. All this had its origin in their evil minds. And yet when it
reached God's plans and purposes, it became God's providence both to Joseph and
to the future of Jacob's descendants. Hear Joseph as he spoke to his brethren
after he had discovered himself to them down in Egypt, -- in which he traces all
the painful events back to the mind of God and made them have to do with
fulfilling God's purposes concerning Jacob and his
posterity:
"Now
therefore be not grieved nor angry with yourselves that ye sold me hither; for
God did send me before you to preserve life. And God sent me before you to
preserve you a posterity on the earth, and to save your lives by a great
deliverance.
"So that it was not you that sent
me hither, but
God."
Cowper's
well-known hymn might well be read in this connection, one verse of which is
sufficient just
now:
"God
moves in a mysterious
way,
His
wonders to
perform;
He
plants His footsteps in the
sea,
And
rides upon the
storm."
The
very same line of argument appears in the betrayal of our Lord by Judas. Of
course it was the wicked act of an evil man, but it never touched our Lord till
the Father gave His consent, and God took the evil design of Judas and worked it
into His own plans for the redemption of the world. It did not excuse Judas in
the least that good came out of his wicked act, but it does magnify the wisdom
and greatness of God in so overruling it as that man's redemption was secured.
It is so always in God's dealings with man. Things which come to us from second
causes are no surprise to God, nor are they beyond His control. His hand can
take hold of them in answer to prayer and lie can make afflictions, from
whatever quarter they may come, "work for us a more exceeding and eternal weight
of glory."
The providence of God goes before
His saints, opens the way, removes difficulties, solves problems and brings
deliverances when escape seems hopeless. God brought Israel out of Egypt by the
hand of Moses, His chosen leader of that people. They came to the Red Sea. But
there were the waters in front, with no crossing nor bridges. On one side were
high mountains, and behind came the hosts of Pharaoh. Every avenue of escape was
closed. There seemed no hope. Despair almost reigned. But there was one way open
which men overlooked, and that was the upward way. A man of prayer, Moses, the
man of faith in God, was on the ground. This man of prayer, who recognized God
in providence, with commanding force, spoke to the people on this
wise:
"Fear ye not; stand still and see the
salvation of the Lord."
With this he lifted up
his rod, and according to Divine command, he stretched his hand over the sea.
The waters divided, and the command issued forth, "Speak unto the children of
Israel that they go forward." And Israel went over the sea dry shod. God had
opened a way, and what seemed an impossible emergency was remarkably turned into
a wonderful deliverance. Nor is this the only time that God has interposed in
behalf of His people when their way was shut
up.
The whole history of the Jews is the story
of God's providence. The Old Testament cannot be accepted as true without
receiving the doctrine of a Divine, overruling providence. The Bible is
preeminently a Divine revelation. It reveals things. It discovers, uncovers,
brings to light things concerning God, His character and His manner of governing
this world, and its inhabitants, not discoverable by human reason, by science or
by philosophy. The Bible is a book in which God reveals Himself to men. And this
is particularly true when we consider God's care of His creatures and His
oversight of the world, His superintendence of its affairs. And to dispute the
doctrine of providence is to discredit the entire revelation of God's Word.
Everywhere this Word discovers God's hand in man's
affairs.
The Old Testament especially, but also
the New Testament, is the story of prayer and providence. It is the tale of
God's dealings with men of prayer, men of faith in His direct interference in
earth's affairs, and with God's manner of superintending the world in the
interest of His people and in carrying forward His work in His plans and
purposes in creation and redemption.
Praying
men and God's providence go together. This was thoroughly understood by the
praying ones of the Scripture. They prayed over everything because God had to do
with everything. They took all things to God in prayer because they believed in
a Divine providence which had to do with all things. They believed in an ever
present God, who had not retired into the secret recesses of space, leaving His
saints and His creatures to the mercy of a tyrant, called nature, and its laws,
blind, unyielding, with no regard for any one who stood in its way. If that be
the correct conception of God, why pray to Him? He is too far away to hear them
when they pray, and too unconcerned to trouble Himself about those on
earth.
These men of prayer had an implicit
faith in a God of special providence, who would gladly, promptly and readily
respond to their cries for help in times of need and in seasons of
distress.
The so-called "laws of nature" did
not trouble them in the least. God was above nature, in control of nature, while
nature was but the servant of Almighty God. Nature's laws were but His own laws,
since nature was but the offspring of the Divine hand. Laws of nature might be
suspended and no evil would result. Every intelligent person is conversant every
day when he sees man overruling and overcoming the law of gravitation, and no
one is surprised or raises his hand or voice in horror at the thought of
nature's laws being violated. God is a God of law and order, and all His laws in
nature, in providence and in grace work together in perfect accord, with no
clash nor disharmony.
God suspends or overcomes
the laws of disease and rain often without or independent of prayer. But quite
often He does this in answer to prayer. Prayer for rain or for dry weather is
not outside the moral government of God, nor is it asking God to violate any law
which He has made, but only asking Him to give rain in His own way, according to
His own laws. So also the prayer for the rebuking of disease is not a request at
war with law either natural or otherwise, but is a prayer in accordance with
law, even the law of prayer, a law set in operation by Almighty God as the
so-called natural law which governs rain or which controls
disease.
The believer in the law of prayer has
strong ground on which to base his plea. And the believer in a Divine
providence, the companion of prayer, stands equally on strong granite
foundations, from which he need not be shaken. These twin doctrines stand fast
and will abide
forever.
"In
every condition, in sickness, in health,
In poverty's vale or abounding in
wealth;
At home or abroad, on the land or the sea,
As thy days may demand
shall thy strength ever be."
This document (last modified April 17, 1997) from the Christian Classics Electronic Library server,
at @Wheaton College